Jamaica has set an ambitious goal of attracting more than half a million Canadian visitors to the island by 2025, a 20 percent increase over the current figure of about 400,000.
According to the Regional Director for Canada for the Jamaica Tourist Board, Angella Bennett, this goal is an “achievable target,” with several strategies already in place to achieve this.
“Canada continues to increase airlift. I’m very happy to hear that we will have three flights out of Montreal. This is a continuously growing market for us and we’re very proud of it,” Bennett said.
“Also, we will have new partners flying to Jamaica and new tour operators looking to sell our destination,” she added.
Currently, Canada’s stopover arrivals for this year are expected to outpace 2022’s figure by more than 40 percent, according to Bennett.
She credited this achievement to travel agents who still account for 70 percent of Jamaica’s bookings.
Bennett expressed gratitude for the continued support of Jamaica’s tourism industry, emphasizing the island’s warm hospitality and growth.
“It gives me great pleasure to come together with you this evening and to say thank you for being here in Jamaica. Thank you for leaving the very cold Canada and to be here in the warm sunshine of the island. Thank you so much for your business,” Bennett said.
Record tourism numbers
The island so far has seen record tourist numbers for this year. Stakeholders in the tourism industry expect the island to close out the year with some 2.9 million stopover visitors and expressed optimism of surpassing the three-million mark in stopover arrivals next year, with earnings of more than $4.5 billion.
Last month, Minister of Tourism Ed Bartlett said that the country witnessed its most robust summer season in recorded history. He shared that stopover visitors surpassed 800,000.
He added that including the cruise passenger figures—which is an additional 230,000—the total number of visitors exceeded one million.
“ [We had] just a little over a million visitors in the period and we earned US$1.5 billion for Jamaica in this summer, the highest and best that we have had,” Bartlett said.
