With just over two weeks for winter travelers to start their vacations, in anticipation of a record winter tourist season, Jamaica Tourism Minister Bartlett says: “This surge in airlift represents an increase of 13 percent over winter 2022/2023, where we recorded a whopping 923,000 airline seats.”
“To date, ten airlines have some 5,914 flights booked out of key US gateways to the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay and Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston between January and April 2024, adding to the flurry expected over the 2023 Christmas holiday period,” Minister Bartlett explained.
The line-up of airlines for the period includes American with 305,436 seats booked on 1,727 flights; Southwest logging 106,925 seats on 611 flights; Delta with 205,776 seats on 1,119 flights; JetBlue with a total of 242,347 seats on 1,434 flights; United booking 92,911 seats on 525 flights and Frontier flying in with 25,482 seats on 137 flights.
Also contributing to the overall increase of 121,104 seats over the corresponding 2022/23 winter period are, Spirit, Sun Country and ALG Charter, with a combined 65,677 seats on 361 flights. Additional airlift is also slated to come from Caribbean Airlines flying out of New York.
“These numbers reflect the ongoing effort of the Ministry of Tourism, through the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) as our marketing arm.”
[We are] “working alongside our international and local partners in the travel and hospitality sectors, to ensure continuous growth in our tourism industry,” says Minister Bartlett.
He also disclosed that “already for the period, January to November 29, 2023, preliminary figures indicate that some 2.5 million stopover visitors have graced our shores, accounting for an 18% increase over the same period in 2022 and a 10% increase over the same period in pre-pandemic 2019.”
“If we continue on this impressive growth trajectory, we will be on track to meet our new projections of 4 million visitors and foreign exchange earnings of US$4.1 billion by year-end,” asserts Minister Bartlett.
