Janet Silvera, Senior Tourism Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

The year started on a high point, and then Jamaica was faced with the return of Cancún, Mexico, after the devastating Hurricane Dean and a huge decline in our strongest market, the United States, as a result of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).

These events were compounded as the Caricom visa regime took effect and the anticipated windfall from the ICC Cricket World Cup did not materalise.

On top of that were Hurricane Dean in August, and the general election in September.

Apart from a plague of locusts, it is hard to imagine what other adversaries could have beset us.

Our strategy to diversify the market in 2007, however, proved enormously successful, and we were able to offset the losses from reduced visitor arrivals from the United States of America. The island bounced back due to increased visitors from Canada, the United Kingdom and other European destinations.

The only region we were denied access to was the Latin American market, which could have made a difference to the overall arrival figures. Nevertheless, we did not lose the high ground reached in 2006. Jamaica again outperformed the rest of the region this year.

The turnaround started in July, with the country's response to the WHTI. We front-loaded our advertising, got very aggressive early in the year, and made sure that the media used were targeted at niches where there were resonable expectations of a high level of passport ownership.

"Given that there was no specific demographic information on these persons, we just had to use good judgement and quickly executed readership surveys," Basil Smith, director of tourism, told The Sunday Gleaner. He added: "We began reaching that segment of the now-diminished U.S. market that had passports."

Guerrilla-style marketing

The second series of strategies to be initiated was a 'guerrilla-style marketing' technique. Tourist board offices were set up at major commuting crossroads, such as Grand Central Station in New York City, with a passenger count of 700,000 per day. Using Blue Mountain Coffee as a lure, people were invited to fill out applications for their passport right there. "This initiative actually attracted the commendation of both the U.S. postal service and the Department of Homeland Security, and both agencies offered to work with us," stated the tourism director.

Although not an initiative of Jamaica, the issuing of passports reached a turnover rate of 1.8 million a month. Coupled with that, two months before the summer, President George Bush relaxed the regulation, making it possible for people who had applied to travel before their passports were actually issued, to do so.

By June, things had begun to improve quite dramatically; by July the numbers were showing a positive trend.

Ocho Rios upstaged the tourism capital Montego Bay nine out of 12 months this year. Of the 1,288,080 stop-over visitors vacationing in Jamaica from January to September 2007, the resort town of Ocho Rios surpassed Montego Bay by 11,107 arrivals, to welcome 337,746 tourists.

Montego Bay took a back seat this year, placing a close second during the same period, receiving some 326,639 visitors. Negril, tagged the 'Capital of Casual' welcomed 263,032. Kingston, 'The heartbeat of the Caribbean', recorded 168,467 visitors, while the rest of the country, including Mandeville and the south coast and the 'Forgotten Paradise', Port Antonio, hosted the remaining 14.9 per cent of visitors to the country.

Ocho Rios was able to surpass the other destinations due to a number of factors: an increased number of attractions; increased cruise-passenger loads; the reopening of Sunset Jamaica Grande, the opening of Ríu Ocho Rios and the Gran Bahía Príncipe.

Up to July, stopover arrivals from the United States remained in the negative, with the Canadian market reporting a record increase. Cumulatively, the Canadian market generated 25,572 additional arrivals for the first seven months of 2007, with a total of 122,407 stopovers compared to 96,835 in 2006.

From all indications, tourism director Basil Smith is confident that stopover arrivals will equal last year's figures of 1.678 million. However, the country is down 10 per cent in cruise-ship passengers.

Overall, tourism rebounded in 2007. New Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett promises that the 2007-2008 winter season will be better than ever.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com