Tourism not as buoyant as cheerleaders say
Published:Friday | February 3, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Contrary to the picture of buoyant tourism arrivals and earnings conjured up by the former minister of tourism, the latest Jamaica Tourist Board statistics show that the slide in stopover arrivals that began in May last year, continued up to October.
As a matter of fact, there were declines in four months [May, July, August & October] of the six-month period. The result is that for the January- October period stopover arrivals grew by only 1.8 per cent, sharply down from 5.1 per cent in the first four months of the year.
This downward path has been largely due to a five per cent decline in traffic from the US North-east region, the largest source of US tourists to Jamaica.
There was also a significant fall-off (-4.5 per cent) in the number of visitors from the UK. Based on the loss of momentum up to October, it is likely that 2011 could turn out to be the slowest growth performance since 2002, when the international tourist industry was reeling from the effects of 9/11.
Jamaica started 2011 among the better performing Caribbean destinations in terms of growth of stopover visitor arrivals, ahead of the Dominican Republic - the largest player, and Puerto Rico, but behind Cuba. The latest figures show that we were outshone by Cuba which had growth of 7.6 per cent up to November, and were overtaken by Puerto Rico at 4.4 per cent growth up to October, and Dominican Republic up 4.0 per cent to November.
Stopover visitors
Our lacklustre performance in attracting stopover visitors has been disguised in recent times by the former minister's use of figures for total visitor arrivals that include cruise passenger and stopover arrivals.
The fact is that cruise passenger arrivals which had fallen off in recent years, began to recover last year, especially with the advent of the new Falmouth pier.
For the January to October period, there was a 16.9 per cent increase and hence this pushed up the rate of growth for total visitors to double digits, giving a different picture than the 1.8 per cent increase in stopover arrivals.
But the truth is that the economic impact of the tourist industry is largely related to expenditure by stopover visitors, which accounts for around 95 per cent of gross tourism earnings.
So the real measure of the industry's performance is to be judged by the movement in stopover arrivals, which was heading in the wrong direction in the second half of 2011.
Surprisingly, industry stakeholders were unusually quiet as the slippage was occurring, apparently leaving the public to believe that activity in the industry was strong.
In the coming months, the tourist industry is going to face the usual challenge of a slowdown in leisure travel by Americans during election years.
Coupled with the pressures in the US economy, this factor is going to bear down on tourist-dependent Caribbean economies that are still struggling to recover from the recession.
We can, therefore, expect aggressive competition as the various destinations seek to hold onto their market share.
Jamaica's competitiveness would be enhanced were we in a position to add new hotel rooms to the existing inventory.
Unfortunately, none of the second phase of the resort developments by Spanish hotel chains is yet at the construction stage, nor are there any other hotel projects for that matter.
This must be a priority issue for the new minister of tourism and his colleague responsible for the investment portfolio.