Janet Silvera, Senior Tourism Writer

Tourists raft down the Rio Grande in Portland. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

WESTERN BUREAU:

Jamaica's Tourism Mini-ster Aloun Assamba is predicting a repeat of the unprecedented bumper winter tourist season that buoyed the island in 2006, while the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) is expressing cautious optimism.

"We are targeting a 15 per cent increase in visitor arrivals for the period January-April 2007, with 10 per cent of this being stopover visitors," said a release from Minister Assamba.

Addressing the resilience of the past season, Minister Assamba said her industry was confronted with the wonderful challenge of how to grow the tourism product even more in 2007.

However, JHTA President Horace Peterkin said his members are not seeing the huge jump in bookings that they saw last season.

"The increase will be very marginal and may just surpass last year's performance," he told The Gleaner with guarded hope.

According to him, the shot in the arm the island received from Cancun, Mexico, as a result of the devastating hurricane that country had in 2005, will have to be replaced by a lot of hard work and strong marketing this year.

"Now that Cancun has re-opened, the business is going back there," he said, adding that to top it off the Mexicans were putting a lot of money behind their advertising and marketing campaign.

Number one destination

The release from the minister said that, although final numbers for 2006 were not yet in, projections were that at the end of November the country would have cleared 2.69 million visitor arrivals, well on its way to becoming the number one Caribbean destination.

"With the significant increases in room stock and airlift last season, we expect this trend to continue into 2007," she added.

Still cautious, Mr. Peterkin said that, based on the new rooms, the island's growth pattern must average at least 12.5 per cent per annum in order to continue the buoyancy.

In the meantime, new Director of Tourism, Basil Smith, said the feedback from tour operators was generally positive although hoteliers are still anxious about the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) which requires all Americans travelling to the Caribbean by air to have a valid passport by January 23, 2007, in order to re-enter the United States.

Mr. Smith, who assumed the tourism director position just over a month ago, said that one of the main areas the board would be concentrating on was "far more use of the Internet in its marketing and dissemination of information".

In order to achieve this aggressive mission, he is hoping for a realistic budget.

The calendar year 2005 was the best ever in the history of the trade, with 2006 running significantly ahead of projections.

In the period January-October 2006, Jamaica registered a whopping 24 per cent over the same period last year to stand at US$2 billion in tourism revenue.