Hoteliers warm up for winter despite global Omicron surge
Published:Wednesday | December 15, 2021 | 12:12 AMJanet Silvera/Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Despite the global surge in the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, Jamaica's tourism stakeholders are confident they will experience 70 per cent occupancy this Christmas into January 2022.
The island's winter tourist season commences today, December 15.
Clifton Reader, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), says hoteliers are optimistic about the winter prospects. So, too, is MBJ Airports Limited, operators of the Sangster International Airport, which stated during its airport forum last week that visitor arrivals to the facility have jumped more than 50 per cent in 2021.
Preliminary analyses issued on Tuesday by South African scientists indicate that the highly transmissible Omicron may cause less severe symptoms and whose effects would be slowed by today's vaccines.
While acknowledging anxiety and concern among JHTA members about flight cancellations affecting other parts of the world, Reader said Jamaica had largely been spared any fallout.
“We continue to prepare to welcome guests from many of our major gateways and members of the diaspora who traditionally come home for the holidays,” said Reader, adding the Resilient Corridors' reputation for their safety protocols offered cautious confidence amid a projected fourth wave of COVID-19.
High levels of vaccination among hotel workers – over 90 per cent at some sites – and stringent sanitisation guidelines have given guests a sense of comfort and confidence in Destination Jamaica, the JHTA president said.
His stance was bolstered by the sentiments of Nicola Madden-Greig, president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), who encouraged regional governments to strike a delicate balance between the health and safety and the restoration of tourism-dependent economies.
Underscoring the need for care in applying travel bans, the CHTA reported that advance bookings of airline tickets and hotel stays indicated a potential tourism recovery rate in 2022 of more than 70 per cent of the industry's 2019 peak performance levels.
“Tourists should also be encouraged by the fact that vaccination rates for employees in the region's tourism industry far outpace those for the general population, and CHTA reported that 28 per cent of employers surveyed reported that 100 per cent of their employees were fully vaccinated and an additional 20 per cent reported that between 75 and 99 per cent of their workforce was fully vaccinated,” said Madden-Greig.