Jamaica shows Olympian spirit in successfully reopening its vibrant culture to tourists

04 Nov Jamaica shows Olympian spirit in successfully reopening its vibrant culture to tourists

Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism, reveals new opportunities for visitors and investors to experience the Caribbean safe haven

Covid-19 has battered the global travel and tourism sector. How is the situation in Jamaica and what has the Jamaican government done to deal with such an unprecedented crisis?

The situation in Jamaica mirrors the world somewhat as we all are impacted. Our economy has shrunk and by over 18 per cent in the last two quarters. The government has had to respond with stimulus packages that are providing social security arrangements for a little over half a million people. Investments have been very strong, the call for help for appropriations and the budget have been beyond our normal situation. The largest portion of our expenditure in the budget now is on health, primarily for Covid security equipment, but also for dealing with the basic management of this risk: dealing with social distancing, supply of masks, personal protective equipment of all types, including sanitation equipment, and of course, more beds and more hospital space.

The good news for us, if there is any, is that we’re managing much better than most of our partners. Our incidence of fatalities out of 100,000 infections is low at under 2 per cent. The recovery rate is also very encouraging and the infection rate has been just about 3-4 per cent of the population. So, we think that we’re managing reasonably well, but the toll on our economy is huge.

For Jamaica, tourism has been the centrepiece of all economic activity. It’s a great hope for recovery for us as well. We have been managing this process. We started out with the closing of our borders, of course, which is what everybody does, and then we started a whole process of training and developing workers and the population in general. Public education has been key so that people understand what this pandemic is about and what their role in helping to manage the crisis is all about. We developed a series of very rigorous protocols, which are in line with global standards published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, we also have looked at how the tourism industry itself has been trying to cope with it and the sort of protocols that are tourism centric. And in that regard, we work with the World Travel and Tourism Council and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Together, we are trying to create a kind of a synthesis here, looking at what the common and best practices are, and developing protocols around those lines.

Jamaica has also been a thought leader in a few areas where this is concerned, one of which is the establishment of a geographical area called the resilience corridor. The tourism resilience corridor is an area where just about 1 per cent of the Jamaican population lives, but it has 85 per cent of the country’s tourism assets. Within that corridor, we enable a level of compliance with all the protocols relating to safety and effective management of visitor presence and experience in the area.

Initially, we started by saying that access to that corridor would only be allowed for touristic purposes, meaning that you would only be able to stay in accommodations within that corridor and not be able to move around, even within the corridor. We’ve expanded that recently and now you can move around the corridor from one location to another. Now visitors can also use all the attractions that are in the corridor. Since then, we have expanded even further to say you can move from inside the corridor within specific conditions – utilising only approved vehicles that comply with the all of the protocols that we’ve established – and you can then access specific attractions that are compliant.

What these measures have done is to reduce the spread of the virus. Certainly the good news, again, is that there are no known cases of Covid-19 transmission along the corridors and, since we opened them in June, we have welcomed over 191,000 visitors. We haven’t had any cases of infection, nor has the incidence of infection among workers in the industry been at any level at all that would attract attention. We think that is a good point of success and I think we can say to the world that you can create an area that is not sterile from the point of view that it becomes an area that is unexciting to the visitor – steering away from the position that you could be locked off from the vast majority of the population within tourist areas, while having enough access to the assets that enable your experiences to be of the highest quality while you’re in a destination. This strategy offers safety for yourself and for the communities that you visit.

This is one of the strategies we have implemented. I think the second thing that we’ve been able to do now is to develop an end-to-end health insurance and logistics package that allows a visitor who comes to Jamaica to be tested, because we do require that to enter our country – you must have a negative Covid test utilising the PCR system and any other WHO-approved testing system. We’re saying that this package enables you to have your testing, then covers any illness that you may generate relating to Covid while you’re at the destination and, if you do get sick, we can repatriate you on a properly appointed aircraft with the necessary paramedical support back to your country. It would also offer you some telemedical arrangements through the Johns Hopkins University system. We consider this a very innovative approach, which is adding a level of comfort, security and confidence to the visitor who comes to Jamaica. I don’t think any other country has such a system at the moment and I believe that Jamaica is leading the way in this regard.

In less than two decades, China has grown from a travel minnow to become the world’s most powerful outbound market. According to the UNWTO, Chinese tourists spent US$277.3 billion overseas in 2018, up from around US$10 billion in the year 2000. In 2014, Jamaica introduced visa-free travel for vacationers and this decision had an immediate impact, especially with regards to the cruise ship sector. How would you characterise the ongoing evolution of Chinese tourism to Jamaica?

The level of tourism activity out of Asia, and particularly from China, has not been as encouraging as we had anticipated when we were given our approved destination status by the Chinese. I think a lot of that has been because airlift has been an issue. We have not been able to provide the air connectivity that was anticipated out of China into the Caribbean as a whole and Jamaica in particular. So, the energy that drives this has been a little lacking because of the air connectivity. However, because China has continued to grow as an outbound destination and there is growing Chinese investment in this side of the world, we are seeing so called “green shoots” in that regard. Of course, then came Covid-19 and that has unfortunately wilted our green shoots.

However, we do think that post-Covid, and with Covid, there is energy that we’re going to have to tap into and we’ll get the Chinese discussions back on track. In fact, there is a huge global summit that is taking place there currently, or within the next couple of days, that Jamaica has an interest in. Although we are not inserted in the conversations, we do have an interest and want to see how, as a destination, we can begin to talk again and get activity going, especially with China but also Japan. Japan represents a very important potential market for us. We were well ahead of the game in discussions to get airlines aligned just prior to Covid, particularly connections going through Panama. We are going to get back on track and Asia will definitely be an interesting area for us in the Caribbean and Jamaica in particular.

Increased tourism spending from the Chinese also brings tourism investments from Chinese companies in the form of hotels, airlines, travel agents, tour operators and more. What is the current level of Chinese investment in Jamaica?

I’m not sure what the exact data status is at the moment in terms of Chinese investment here but, pre-Covid, the Chinese were the largest investors in our country over the last 20 years. They’ve invested a lot in infrastructure, highways in particular, in housing and other areas of infrastructure, and I think they were beginning to get an appetite for tourism. In the case of the Bahamas, there is the Baha Mar resort and casino investment, which is huge. In Jamaica, we had discussions about investment in tourism prior to Covid. Those discussions are a little muted at the moment but we think that, as the industry recovers, so will the energy for investment in tourism.

Are there any specific projects in Jamaican tourism that are open for outside investment today that could turn into flagship projects for Asian investors?

We’re going to be building out some new destinations within the Jamaican experience. Areas to the southeast of the city of Kingston are potential tourism areas and we have done the necessary studies. We have wonderful beaches over there and beautiful flora. It is part of the mountain range of Jamaica, the Blue Mountains, which is part of our World Heritage designation. We also have one of the best natural spas in the world in that section of the island. We’re looking at health and wellness, building out ecotourism and also community tourism within those areas. The emphasis is on lower density and more sustainability as a feature of the development process on that side.

On the southwestern side of the island, we are looking at advancing a little more higher-density tourism, but also at utilising the really rich flora and fauna within that area as well as the geophysical features that are peculiar to us on this side of the region. Jamaica will be looking at cruise tourism in a stronger way as well. We want to build out some new ports and create perhaps an itinerary of our own, so that you could move from one area of Jamaica by cruise into others and enjoy all of the offerings that we have here. Exciting prospects for investment are in hotels, gaming casinos, cruises and new cruise ports, as well as in building out attractions and experiences that are driving visitor arrivals into locations.

How is Jamaica branding itself in China and increasing Chinese awareness of its uniqueness as a destination?

In China, for example, I think we have a quantum jump on other countries due to the sports and cultural side of the Jamaica experience. Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive, set two of his world records in Beijing, at the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium. That put China on the map as an athletic destination and inserted at the heart of that is Jamaica and Usain Bolt. Significant momentum grew from this, as Jamaica is seen as an athletic country and formed a relationship with China because they had hosted their first ever summer olympics. This event certainly put China on the sports map and the world records that were broken there have Jamaica fully inscribed on them.

The second driver of awareness is, of course, reggae music, which is also very popular among a large number of the younger Chinese demographic groups. We see these two aspects as important touch points for us to drive market recognition and brand appreciation. Chinese investment in Jamaica may be small in relation to China’s global investment, but it is growing and it also offers an opportunity for us to look now at how we can tie the tourism brands of Chinese and Asian derivatives to our product here in Jamaica. So, in an interesting way, the confluence of Jamaican cultural values and investment options are what are going to drive our brand recognition in Asia and particularly in China.

Do you have a final comment for the millions of viewers and readers of the South China Morning Post?

For the world, this is an unprecedented period in human existence. There is no time in recent world history where every single country has been affected simultaneously by any global occurrence. And we feel that this is a moment of great challenge, but it is also a moment of great opportunity because it enables us to redefine ourselves, redefine our experiences and even to reprioritise what is important to the human family. I also believe that travel and tourism is so much a part of the human experience. We are people who are gregarious; we’re people who are nomadic in many instances. We move around to improve our appreciation of each other and also to seek our fortunes. Tourism will bounce back and tourism will continue to define the recovery process of the global economy.

Jamaica, as far as we may appear to be from China and Asia, is really a short flight away because technology is allowing us to connect in short order. Let us fight this pandemic together. Let’s overcome it together, and let’s continue to connect and to stay together, even though we are apart.