Jamaica’s tourist arrivals

Tourist arrivals to Jamaica showed promising signs for April and may have bounced for the first time in 2025, compared with 2024, data recently released on airport traffic for that month by Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, operators of Jamaica’s two largest airports show.

The preliminary data show passenger traffic for April 2025, through Kingston’s Norman Manley, enjoying a solid 14.5 percent rise from 135,400 to 155,000, while it climbed 10.6 percent for the year to date to 583,100, from 527,400 in the prior year.
While at the Montego Bay Sangster International Airport, the heavy bleeding may be ending with a minute decline of 1.3 percent from 435,900 in 2024 to 430,400 and a fall of 6.5 percent to 1,769,400 from 1,893,200 last year.

The shift of Easter coming well into April compared with the end of March in 2024 would have played a big role in the improvement this time year.

April’s Jamaica Tourist arrivals drop

Visitor arrivals dropped 7.7 percent at Kingston’s Norman Manley to 135,100 in April this year from 146,500 in 2023 and down 2.6 percent to 526,500 from 540,600 for the first four months of the year.
Montego Bay Sangster International Airport had a 4.2 percent reduction to 435,500 from 454,500 for the similar period in 2023 and rose 4.8 percent to 1.8928 million from 1.8055 million.
The data was taken from a report on airport traffic during April published by Grupo Aeroportuario Del Pacifico operators of Jamaica’s two major airports.
The monthly decline may be due to a shift in the Easter holiday period to the close of March this year would have pushed stopover traffic with March compared with 2023 with Easter coming at the end of the first week in April.
Note that the numbers represent incoming and outgoing traffic as such actual arrivals would approximate half of the amounts reported above.