Another first for Jamaica! World Tourism Resilience Day.

Jamaica's image of being "likkle but wi tallawah" is on show again as the island prepares to offer the world another "first" among its many accomplishments. On February 17, Jamaica will lead the world in commemorating "World Tourism Resilience Day." Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett announced at a recent diaspora online forum hosted by US Ambassador Audrey Marks. 

"Jamaica is suggesting to the world that starting this February 17 and every year after, the world should stop, pause and reflect on the critical importance of building resilience," said the Minister.

The recognition ceremony will take center stage during Jamaica week at the Dubai expo, where Jamaica, among 192 countries, is meeting for the 35th World Expo.  

Jamaica pioneered the Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Center in 2018 with its main office at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus. Since then, at least ten other countries have established centers or partly so. These include Kenya, Jordan, Bulgaria, Canada, Namibia, Botswana, Nigeria, Ghana, Spain, and Greece.

Jamaica paving the way for resilient tourism

In touting the work of the resilience and crisis management initiative, Bartlett said Jamaica is not only attractive to the world because of its geophysical features and artificial attractions.

"We are also thought-leaders. We have created constructs that are now being utilized in other parts of the world. And this pandemic brings to the fore two critical elements. One; is sustainability, and the second is resilience," he said, noting that very little has been done to build resilience.

"The pandemic has shown us how difficult it is for recovery to be appreciated, indeed, to be achieved. Resilience is what builds that capacity to not only be able to track disruptions, like a pandemic, like an earthquake, like hurricanes, like cybercrimes, economic downturns, or terrorism. But there is also a chance to mitigate it, to recover from it, and then to thrive after recovery."

Jamaica was the third country to develop a comprehensive set of protocols for managing the pandemic. Therefore, it received the attention of the region and the World Tourism and Travel Council. The island got its seal for 'safe travel' before the United States, the United Kingdom, and most of the world's major countries.

Jamaica's response to COVID-19

Speaking specifically to Jamaica's response to the pandemic, the tourism minister said: "We started on the right foot. We then develop a whole series of methodologies to build out competence in various areas of the management of COVID. And we enjoyed in the initial stages reasonable, tolerable levels of infection."

He reminded the forum that Jamaica has never closed its borders since it reopened in June 2020.  

"That is a big statement and a positive one because so many countries, ones larger than us much more endowed and resourced than we are, have opened, closed, closed, and opened. Jamaica has recovered. Our economy has grown for three consecutive quarters since 2021. We have brought back 1.6 million visitors to Jamaica and earned some US$2 billion. We lost because of COVID, 130,000 workers from the tourism industry, and we have brought back 80,000," 

Minister Bartlett suggested that as a result of how Jamaica managed its affairs, "the investment in tourism is continuing apace." He referenced more than 9,000 additional rooms to be added to Jamaica's room stock.  

"I just came back from Madrid, where we settled 3,000 additional rooms. On February 17, a new 700 room hotel in Falmouth, construction is going on now for a 2,000-room hotel in Green Island, and Hard Rock 700-room hotel to commence shortly.   We have 1,000 rooms of Sandals to be done, 700 more rooms from Riu, 280 rooms from Breathless in Montego Bay, to be followed by 700 rooms in Richmond, St. Ann."  

Tourism is Jamaica's second-largest foreign exchange earner behind remittances. In 2019, the island received 4.2 million visitors and earned US$3.64 billion.