Tourism booms in Jamaica after pandemic
KINGSTON- The Associated Press
The number of tourists flocking to Jamaica’s sun-drenched beaches soared nearly 100 percent in the first three months of the year, causing long queues and hours-long waits for arriving passengers at the island’s main airport.
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said that the problem stemmed from a shortage of airport staff to process the unexpected volume of people flying into Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay since the end of the pandemic.
Bartlett told Parliament that there were 1.18 million arrivals from January through March — 94 percent more than the same period of 2022 and a record high for Jamaica’s tourism high season.
“The recovery has been stronger than anticipated and everybody all over the world is having difficulty with their airports because … (many) of the workers have not come back,” Bartlett said.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the problems at Sangster underscore the need to push through the $70 million modernization and expansion project that already was underway.
The work is scheduled to be completed by 2025, and Honess said the improvements at the Caribbean’s largest and busiest airport “will make Jamaica more attractive and make Jamaica more competitive with other countries in the region, which have also invested heavily in improving their infrastructure.”
Bartlett said the Tourism Ministry’s growth plan aims to have the island draw 5 million visitors annually by 2025.
That would be a 35 percent increase from Jamaica’s peak of 3.7 million tourists in 2022.
Bartlett said Asian and Middle Eastern countries are among new markets being targeted and the airport must be able to accommodate the larger aircraft that would be used on such long-haul flights.
