Bounce in tourist arrivals to Jamaica

September 8, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Passenger traffic increased 2.8 percent for Kingston’s Norman Manley International airport, in August over the similar 2025 period, while Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport recorded a decline by 23 percent, for the same. For Montego Bay, the decline reflects an improvement over July that suffered a fall of 26.6 percent, but with a greater passenger count than in August this year.

The number of passengers  travelling via the Sangster International Airport was 344,600, down from 447,400 last year August. For the year to date, 2.63 million passed through the island’s north western airport, 26.2 percent below last year of 3.56 million passengers.

Kingston’s Norman Manley had 205,100 passengers passing through the airport in August, up from 199,200 last year. For the first eight months of the year traffic slipped 1.6 percent to 1.253 million versus 1.273 million in 2025.

The data is published by Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, operators of the Jamaica’s two major airports.

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Tourist traffic improvement continues for Jamaica

June 12, 2026 by
Tourist traffic transiting Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport shows a modest improvement in May compared with April, with a fall of 19 percent compared with 22 percent for April, this year over 2025, data released by Grupo Aeroportuario Del Pacifico show.

Traffic through Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport dropped by 5.2 percent to 138,700 passengers in May this year, from 146,300 in May 2025. The decline in May compares favourably with a 6 percent fall in April this year, compared with 2025.
For the Year to May, the Montego Bay airport processed 27.3 percent less passengers than last year, with 1,573,000 passing through, versus 2,164,800 in 2025, an improvement over the 29.2 percent fall up to April.
The capital city ended with 699,200 passengers, moving through the Norman Manley International Airport, with a fall of 4.1 percent to 729,300 versus 3.1 percent up to April this year.

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Jamaica Tourist arrivals settling  

June 10, 2025 by
Passengers passing through the Montego Bay, Sangster International Airport in May 2025, is showing signs of improvement, with 395,400 incoming and outgoing passengers, a fall of just 1.6 percent from the 401,700 in 2024. Year to date, a decline of 5.7 percent took place, with a total pass through of 2,164,800 passengers, down from 2,295,000 in 2024.

Kingston Normal Manley Airport, the smaller of the two, continues to lead with an increase of 4.8 percent in May, to 146,300 versus 139,700 in May 2024 and an increase of 9.5 percent year to date, with 729,300 passengers up from 666,200 in 2024. The increased traffic in May amounts to 6,600 passengers, more than the 5,300 decline in Montego Bay.  

The preliminary terminal passenger traffic figures were released by Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, operators of both airports.

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Jamaica’s tourist arrivals up in April?

May 9, 2025 by
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.

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Jamaica tourist arrivals hit the skids

June 10, 2024 by

After a robust start to stopover arrivals in the early months of the year, data on passenger traffic passing through Jamaica’s two major international airports declined in May, with passenger traffic passing through the Sangster International Airport slipping from 402,000 in May last year to 401,500, down 0.3 percent.
The airport traffic although not telling the full picture of stopover arrivals, is a good barometer of likely outcomes showing that Sangster International Airport which accounts for around 85 percent of visitor arrivals is up just 3.9 percent to 2,294,800 for the year to date.
This is the second month of decline for Montego Bay that had a 4.2 percent reduction to 435,500 in April from 454,500 for the same period last year, bringing the year to date increase then to 4.8 percent to 1.8928 million.
Traffic through Kingston’s Norman Manley continues the decline since the start of the year, with a fall of 1.1 percent to 139,900 compared to 141,500, with traffic for the first five months of this year, declining by 2.2 percent to 667,300 from 682,300.
The data is taken from a report on airport traffic during May published by Grupo Aeroportuario Del Pacifico operators of Jamaica’s two major airports.

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Tourist arrivals continue to slow

December 17, 2023 by

Tourist arrivals to Jamaica are up solidly for the year to November with an increase, of around 20 percent, but the rate of growth has slowed considerably since April with an increase in stopover arrivals of 14 percent compared with 28 percent in March and 44 percent for the first quarter. By July the rate of growth dropped to 12 percent for the month as growth starts returning to more sustainable levels.
Recent data emanating out of Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay shows 403,600 passengers being handled in November, 7.3 percent more than the 376,100 handled in November 2022, with the pace of growth down from 10.3 percent in October and the Kingston Airport processing 123,000 passengers, 6.6 percent fewer than the 131,700 handled in November 2022. Passenger activity in Kingston declined for a third consecutive month with October down 8.9 percent compared with October 2022.

For the first eleven months of 2023, the Montego Bay Airport processed 20.4 percent more passengers, with 3,918,900 being handled in 2022 moving to 4,716,800 in 2023. Total passenger movements grew by 13.5 percent at the Norman Manley International Airport from 1,402,300 in 2022 to 1,592,000 in the first eleven months of 2023.

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Record tourist arrivals for Jamaica

December 8, 2022 by

Jamaica tourist arrivals are now running at record levels since August this year, with data showing the country enjoying four consecutive months of arrivals exceeding similar months in 2019, the previous best period. Airport passenger movements through the Sangster International Airport are up an average of 12 percent for September to November.
If the recent trend continues, it would mean that stopover arrivals should be in the region of 3 million next year, up from 2,680,920 in 2019 and would exceed those in 2022 of around 2.5 million by a solid 20 percent or so, with the winter months enjoying much higher levels of growth as those moths were down sharply compared with 2019.
Tourist arrivals into Jamaica continued the significant improvement over 2019, the best year for tourist arrivals for the country, with traffic through the Montego Bay Sangster International Airport rising 8 percent over 2019 and 38.7 percent over 2021 as 375,900 passengers passed through the airport this year, up from 271,000 in 2021 and 348,200 total passengers arriving and departing in 2019. For the eleven months of 2022, airport arrivals in the west of the country amounted to 3,918,700 compared to 2,240,600 and 2021 and 8 percent less than the 4,208,100 that passed through the airport in 2019.
Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston had 131,700 passengers passing through the airport in November this year and up a solid 68.8 percent above the 78,000 passing through in 2021 and 1.1 percent less than 133,200 passengers passing through in 2019. Kingston’s Norman Manley airport handled 1,398,800 passengers for the 11 months to November, 93.8 percent above the 721,800 handled in 2021 but down 17 percent on the 1,680,477 movements in 2019.

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Jamaica tourists’ arrivals 17% upon 2019

October 16, 2022 by

Tourist arrivals to Jamaica likely jumped 17 percent in September 2022 over 2019, the best September on record, data out of Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay indicate. According to a Tourismanalytics.com report, the total number of passengers handled by the airport in the month was 300,600, up from the 256,900 passengers passing through the airport in September 2019 and well up on the 191,000 passengers dealt with in September 2021.

Growth in tourism expected in 2023

At the same time, 137,000 passengers passed through the Norman Manley airport in Kingston in September, up from only 73,000 passengers in September 2021 and marginally down 3 percent from the 141,029 processed in September 2019.
Total passenger movements for Montego Bay increased 83.2 percent, from 1,761,000 in 2021 to 3,225,800 in the first nine months this year and was 89.1 percent of the 3,622,100 passengers handled in the same period in 2019.
Kingston Airport handled processed 99.6 percent more passengers for the first nine months of 2022, an increase from 565,900 in 2021 to 1,129,400 or 20 percent less than the 1,410,142 passengers handled in 2019.

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Jamaica tourist arrivals above 2019?

September 19, 2022 by

Growth in tourism in August 2022 exceeds 2019

Tourist arrivals to Jamaica may have exceeded 2019 numbers for the first time since the tourist industry suffered a major decline following the advent of Covid-19 in 2020, data from Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay shows.
The airport handled 1.1 percent more than the 401,500 passengers in August 2019 bringing total passenger movements in August 2022 to 405,800, which was 5.7 percent fewer than the 430,300 handled in July this year and was 2.9 percent fewer than the 443,100 passengers handled in July 2019. The Airport handled 294,100 passengers in August 2021.
The Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica handled 184,400 total passengers in August this year, an increase of 4.6 percent over July and almost twice the numbers in August last of 97,300 passengers.  Traffic in August 2022 increased by 4.6 percent from 176,300 total movements in July 2022 to 184,400 in August 2022.
For the first eight months of 2022, Sangster International handled 86.3 percent more passengers, from 1,569,900 in 2021 to 2,925,100. The number of passengers this year to August is 87 percent of the 3,365,200 passengers handled in the similar period of 2019. Through the first eight months of 2022 Kingston’s Airport saw total passenger movements grow by 101.3 percent, from 492,900 in 2021 to 992,100 in the first eight months of 2022.

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Jamaica’s tourism recovery slowed in January & February

March 20, 2022 by

Jamaica’s tourism recovery slowed in the first two months of 2022, as indicated by airport traffic passing through the country’s two international Airports shows.
The Sangster International Airport handled a total of 274,700 incoming and outgoing passengers in February 2022, just 2.7 percent ahead of the 267,300 in January 2022, but total passenger movements in February 2022 was 67.6 percent of the 406,400 handled in February 2019 and 64.3 percent of the 426,700 passengers handled in February 2020. The Montego Bay Airport handled just 75,600 passenger movements in February 2021, following the reopening of the country to international travel in June of 2020.
For the first two months of 2022, total passenger movements through the Sangster International Airport, increased 209.2 percent, from 175,300 in 2021 to 542,000 and representing 64 percent of the 846,200 passenger movements handled in the first two months of 2019, according to Aeroportuario del Pacifico, which manages the airports in Montego Bay and Kingston, Tourismanalytics.com report shows.
The Kingston Norman Manley International Airport recorded a decrease of 15 percent in February this year from January, from 91,200 to 77,500 total incoming and outgoing passengers in February 2022, well off the 122,600 passenger movements in February 2020, but up from just 30,100 passengers in February 2021. For the first two months of 2022 total passengers passing through Kingston grow by 114.1 percent, from 78,800 in 2021 to 168,700 in 2022.
The growth for the island slowed markedly from a fall of 20.6 percent in December last year and 25 percent in November compared to 2019.  Arrivals and departures of 281,115 in December 2019 slipped to 223,333 in December 2021, but last year December was well up on 2020 at just 90,164.
Sounds out of the industry suggest that March is performing very well. “The tourism sector is back on track with another record weekend of stopover arrivals, with close to 35,000 visitors coming through the Sangster and Norman Manley international airports combined, between Thursday, March 10 and Sunday, March 13,” Minister Bartlett stated recently.
This number tops the combined 30,000 arrivals the previous weekend, with Sangster International accounting for 27,000 visitors. Jamaica continues to be the destination of choice in the Caribbean and based on projections, Minister Bartlett says “we expect that this March will be the strongest in terms of arrivals since the pandemic disrupted worldwide tourism in 2020 and we expect in excess of 200,000 coming to Jamaica for the month.”

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