Minister of Tourism Jamaica (Jamaica)

Jamaica is a major player in the Caribbean, being the second biggest economy in CARICOM as well as the second largest population. But it also has serious competition on all fronts – tourism, financial, and otherwise. What are the main comparative advantages Jamaica has and what are the areas where it can still get better?

I think our first comparative advantage is our iconic attraction called our people. The people of Jamaica, borne out of this confluence of cultures and ethnicities, provides a mosaic that is a reflection of the world. Our people have a natural inclination to hospitality. We are a very warm, friendly people and a happy people, and we transmit that to our visitors when they come. So the experience called Jamaica is the comparative advantage that we have.
We have a competitive advantage in that for the quality of the experience that we offer, the price is unbelievable.
The challenge is, for us of course, is to bring out a more varied demographic. That will enable higher tourism expenditures and to generate larger earnings for us. We also have challenges in terms of building out our own absorptive capacity for the demand of tourism. Because tourism is a huge driver of economic activities in a varied field. Our ability to be able to fill out that is what will make the tourism dollar stay in your destination and provide the added economic thrust that you require to build the independence of your people.

Jamaica, and Kingston specifically, have the unfortunate reputation of being unsafe. What is your assessment of that reputation? What is your advice to people visiting the country?

It is an unfortunate perception, because what the world needs to appreciate is that crime against tourists and visitors in Kingston is less than 1% of all the criminal activity that takes place in the area. It is very unlikely that a tourist coming into Kingston would encounter any criminal challenges. It’s very, very unlikely, based on this statistic.
However, it is true that domestic crime is at an unacceptable level. It’s low in comparison to many countries in the world, but nevertheless at an unacceptable level for us. So we have to overcome that perception and we’re building out some new strategies to encourage more people to come in and experience the delights of Kingston and the new safety features that we are putting in. As a matter of fact, I just left a meeting where I was charging our product development company, that is responsible for destination assurance, to build out the security initiatives that will enable not only for us to have strong, effective and friendly security arrangements, but would also get the message to the wider public that Jamaica is not only safe and beautiful, but it has all the preparatory work to enable the proliferation and/or the mitigation of whatever possible criminal or other infractions that may come.
In other words, we are preventative in our strategy and curative in our prescriptions.

Speaking to the chairman of JHD in Kingston, Mr. Jarrett, we talked a bit about a competition between Montego Bay and Kingston. Often times, competition is healthy and can become a win win situation, how do you think this can be achieved in this case?

As a minister, I never think of these two destinations as being in competition. I think of them as being collaborative in a lot of areas and I see them as complimentary to building out the experience of destinations in Jamaica.
But to the point, the two destinations are two different destinations with two different appeals. Kingston is more commercial city-type tourism that focuses a lot on heritage, food, culture and music. Whereas Montego Bay is a resort destination, with beaches, large hotels, attractions of a different nature. Both of them have different appeals that brings out the complementarity of which is spoke. So, not to differ with any of my colleagues, but rather to emphasize the point, that these are two wonderful destinations with their own character that drive their own demographics.
If you’re speaking to the narrow issue of conferences, we have to build up the capability of Kingston to accommodate large meetings, conferences and so on, which is something we’re thinking through. The problems about having large conference centers for big conventions and meetings is that you need to have comparative and homogenous rooms. If you don’t, you’re likely not to get large groups that require group rates.
So Kingston has a shortage of rooms. We’re going to be driving investment in this area as hard as we can to get more hoteliers and investors to get accommodation to come in. While we’re doing that, we also want to build out more experiences. Shopping is a huge area that we think is needed, and then food, gastronomy. We’re going to be building out those two. In addition, of course, to what already exists: music is strong, sports are strong. Knowledge, I think three of the main universities are here in Kingston, and certainly the largest of the lot, West Indies. We also have to strengthen the image of Kingston as a business center.

Jamaica is a tourist destination because of its beaches and weather, being a Caribbean island. But it also has a very rich history, and many other things to offer. Do you plan to emphasize those aspects and others?

The passion points are many and varied. Jamaica has the capability to build out lifestyle tourism, health tourism. We have enormous flora with tremendous potential for nutraceutical medicine to create particular applications for spas. That’s a key area, and we are doing work on it. In fact, we just completed a policy on medical tourism.
Then there are sports. We have the fastest runners in the world. Today, we have Usain Bolt, who is a legend in his own time, then there is Shelly-Ann Fraser. So we are one of the few countries, indeed, the only country of our size, ever, to have the fastest man alive and the fastest woman alive, all at the same time. So sports tourism is another important passion area.
Knowledge tourism is something that people don’t quite get, but it is a huge area that drives large traffic into destinations. Jamaica is building itself out in that regard; the University of West Indies, the University of Technology, the Caribbean University, the Northern Caribbean University, and a number of universities that are here. It offers opportunities for short term courses that bring people in for six weeks, eight weeks, four weeks, as the case might be, and all of that is causing arrivals, requiring accommodation, and so on, building and driving economic activities.
Then, of course, I mentioned food, which is a huge area to go, gastronomy and shopping. And then, of course, heritage and nature, and all of the other great geophysical endowments which Jamaica is blessed with. There are caves, and stalagmites and stalactites, and the varied other physical formations which have influenced how we see the country. The Blue and John Crow Mountains, which have been designated as a World Heritage site, and the Cockpit Country, which is, again, one of the wonders of this region. So Jamaica has a number of areas we can build out, and we are doing this.
We know 70% or so of our visitors go to the Dunn’s River Falls, which is a nature experience. What could reasonably be construed from that is that the large majority of the visitors who come here do go for nature experiences as well as for adrenaline rush experiences, such as zip-lines and swimming with the dolphins. I think the beach, and sand, sea and sun, remain the second top attraction. Definitely, people come for the beaches. And there is a lot of nutraceutical value that Jamaica has developed over time, where people go to spas, health and wellness tourism.
Jamaica also has excellent doctors. We have the potential to develop a huge medical tourism product. We are located close enough to America, it’s easy to get here; it’s the biggest and richest market for medical tourism in the world. What we have to do, however, is to align some of our policies with the American system so as to enable us to have interchange of insurance activity and HMO activity, and so on.
That will come, but of course there are other issues to deal with now, with the new regulations in relation to the movement of money.

You have recently met with tourism stakeholders both in Jamaica and in the US. The feeling I’ve had from several people we’ve talked to in Jamaica is that this government is more ambitious than the former one. So what are your goals in terms of tourism in the next few years?

We have made it very clear that tourism is a critical platform for the economic growth of our country. But tourism growth itself has been anemic over the years. It is true that tourism is the only industry that has grown consistently every quarter for the last 30 years, but it has grown between 1.5 to 2.5% average per annum. That doesn’t give the impact that tourism needs in the economy overall. It makes some people wealthy, yes, but the vast majority of the people have not felt its impact. So we have to grow the industry to a minimum of 5% and then into exponential double digits. When you go to 5% to annum from now, you’ll be earning somewhere in the region of three billion US dollars, and you’ll be bringing pretty close to four million arrivals. When you do that, then you begin to feel the effects of tourism because of the demand that it represents for a whole range of goods and services to be delivered and provided by your artisans, and your manufacturers, and agriculturalists and so on and so forth.
So our growth ambition is to take the tourism to a minimum of 5%, which we project for 2017, and then, by 2020, we start getting into double digits. Now, what does that require? That requires for us to build new products. We have to expand the accommodation subsector and build more hotel rooms. We have to build more attractions. If we build out these passion points we mentioned, we have to build out products around those passion points. We have to have more investments, so we have to go after new investments and stronger FDIs, plus local investments. We have to encourage local entrepreneurship in tourism. Then, we have to go for new markets. We now have to go to China, to Mexico, and bring new markets to bear. We have to build new partnerships; airlines, tour operators, countries. We’re thinking about multi-destination marketing in this new shared economy. That’s something that we have to begin to understand. We have to respond to new innovations, of course. And finally, we have to build out the human capital. We have to renew the human capital to build the quality services that will enable us to keep that distinctiveness within the destination.
So those are the A) projections, and B) prescriptions to get the growth that we want.

 This is your second time as Tourism Minister of Jamaica, as you were part of the previous JLP government. What have you learned from and since your previous tenure? Are the policies you will start now that you hadn’t thought of at the time?

In my first incarnation, as I call it, as Tourism Minister, it was about learning and understanding the industry. We had to learn what he had to deliver. It also coincided with the greatest recession that we’ve had in the world since the 1920’s and 30’s. So it was a challenging period. And that period also taught us how important it is for us to build partnerships, and how critical it is for us to have destination quality assurance. It has taught us, also, how important it is to understand global tourism. Because, in tourism, there’s nothing local; everything is global.
So with that recognition, I was able to forge good partnerships outside, so that even in the opposition years, we were still benefiting from that relationship. Now we can leverage that relationship to build new products, to go for the new markets, to expand new partnerships – you see, it comes right back! And the idea is to build your people. Because if you are able to build your people, then you will be able to build that iconic attraction I told you about initially. So I’ve learned and I’m now in a much better position and in a much better place. In fact, in the process, Jamaica has been well positioned as a tourism destination of choice for many, but also that Jamaica’s tourism is recognized globally, and forms part of the best practices that the world seeks to understand. That explains why we’re invited to speak at international forums all across the globe.

Having held such high offices for such a long time, what are you most proud of in your career or maybe in your life in general?

To be honest with you, something that is about to happen that hasn’t quite happened yet, is part of what I’m most proud of; it’s building the social security for tourism workers. Because tourism workers in Jamaica are seasonal workers. And as a result, they have no social security, no coverage, no umbrella to shelter them from the rain. We have started working on the pension plan here in Jamaica during my first term. To the credit of my predecessor, they’ve continued to work on it. And now, it is poetic justice that I shall roll out this new plan. So that, within the next few weeks or months, we will have a pension program for the workers in the industry.