Jamaica Beats Forecast For 2021 Visitors & Spend

Jamaica welcomed more than 1.5 million visitor arrivals to its shores in 2021, beating previous forecasts. These visitors’ on-island spend totalled over USD $2.095 billion, positively impacting local businesses and tourism stakeholders.

Visitor arrivals and spend for full year 2021 had originally been projected to be approximately 1.5 million and USD $1.9 billion, respectively. Of the total 1,535,165 visitor arrivals recorded, 1,464,399 were air stopover arrivals.

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The U.S. was both the largest and best-performing market, accounting for 1,278,679 air stopover arrivals in 2021. Overall, visitors have been staying longer in 2021, with the average length of stay increasing to 9.1 nights in 2021 as compared to 7.9 nights in 2019.

“The fact that we exceeded visitor arrivals and spend projections for 2021 is a clear testament to the strength and resilience of Jamaica’s tourism product as well as the excellent relationships we enjoy with our travel industry partners,” said Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism.

“As we are gradually relaxing travel restrictions, we fully expect a stronger recovery as consumers from our key source markets are resuming international travel in steadily growing numbers.”

For the month of December 2021 alone, air stopover arrivals reached 223,333 or 79.4% of December 2019 levels. For 2022, Jamaica is projecting approximately 2.45 to 2.5 million visitor arrivals with a total visitor spend of about USD $2.9 billion.

Jamaica got more good news last week when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States s downgraded Jamaica to a Level 1 designation in its latest COVID-19 travel advisory to citizens. Countries classified as Level 1 have low cases of the virus. Joining just a handful of countries globally at Level 1, Jamaica’s case levels have steadily decreased in recent months.

“A Level 1 travel advisory is amongst the best news the tourism industry can hope for,” said Minister Bartlett. “This reduced designation is a testament to the work of our government and the Jamaican people as well as a hopeful incentive to keep our tourism recovery moving forward.”