THE Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) says provisional data have shown that a record 4.3 million tourists visited Jamaica in 2017.
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said the the figures represent a 21.1 per cent increase over arrivals in 2016.
“We broke the four million mark in December and by the end of (the month) we had gone to 4.3 million arrivals. It comprised 2,353,461 stopover visitors and 1,946,780 cruise passengers, providing a revenue flow of approximately US$3 billion,” he said.
The minister was speaking at the official opening of the Knutsford Express bus service depot at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay on Tuesday.
Bartlett said the historic tourism out-turns for 2017 were milestone achievements for Jamaica, noting that “it is the first time that…we brought more than 500,000 additional visitors in a single calendar year”.
Noting that Jamaica earned US$2.56 billion in 2016, he said last year’s revenue inflow indicated that “we have (generated) nearly US$500 million of additional earnings in one single year”.
Against this background, Bartlett lauded the industry’s stakeholders, including entrepreneurs and workers, for their collective contribution to the exponential growth in visitor arrivals and earnings in 2017. He was also optimistic that this momentum will continue in 2018.
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