Promising tourist season went south

Jamaica was enjoying a promising 2020 tourism season and then suddenly things went awfully, bad with the worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus that led to the closure of the country’s airports in March and disrupting visitor arrivals.
Stopover visitor arrivals rose strongly by 6 percent first two months of the year ahead of the similar period last year. January enjoyed a 4.9 percent bounce according to data put out by the JTB with February rising by 7.1 percent.
The critically, important USA market that accounts for about two thirds of visitors and much more in dollar intake, outperformed the overall industry bringing 9.7 percent more stopover visitors to the island in the two-month period. Arrivals from Canada were up just 1.6 percent. The UK market the third best market for Jamaica was down 2.1 percent, Europe fell 20.3 percent, but the Latin American market jumped stunning 58 percent to 10,566 persons. The Caribbean region saw 6.4 percent more arrivals coming in than in 2019. Asia fell a sharp 22.4 percent. Africa declined 13 percent and other countries 9.3 percent with just 747 arrivals. The U.S.A market accounted for 64.5 percent of stopover arrivals for the period, up from 62.4 percent in 2019. American tourists spend more on their vacations than the vast majority of visitors.
Cruise ship visitor arrivals continued the decline experienced since last year with a 15.2 percent fall having declined in both months of the year.
Figures for March, are not yet available, but will likely show a sharp fall with the closure of airports in March.