Jamaican Tourism Minister Edmund C. Bartlett joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the island’s COVID-19 response plan, ‘JAMAICA CARES’
Video transcription
– Many people are getting restless and want to travel, and one of the most popular tourist destinations before the pandemic was Jamaica. It will soon be a popular destination again. We are going to welcome the Minister of Tourism of Jamaica, Edmund Bartlett. It’s good to have you here, sir.
I have been in your wonderful country. I actually took Blue Mountain Coffee, which I love, and I’m looking forward to going back. So, share with us what you have implemented with JAMAICA CARES to help international tourists return, and I know that, recently, I think it was the first nurse in Jamaica who received the COVID-19 vaccine. So, update us.
EDMUND C. BARTLETT: Well thank you very much. It is truly a pleasure to share Jamaica’s newest and most important marketing strategy for attracting and retaining the wonderful partners that have made our industry so strong over the years. We know what happened to this COVID-19. It literally collapsed traditional demographics as we understand it. The generations Z, Y, millennials and baby boomers have outgrown a new demographic group that we call generation C, generation COVID.
And the characteristic of this generation, of course, is that they are hungry for travel. They are planning their many trips. They shared experiences of living with COVID in the past year or more. They are also from all over the world and of all ages. And they carefully evaluate their different destinations, focusing, of course, on places that will help them to cope with new travel needs, while prioritizing their health, safety and family well-being.
Therefore, in Jamaica we are strongly focused on resilience and we have reinvented international tourism to successfully enable the resumption of travel. We are also really at the forefront, I must say, in building a broad response to destiny in a program we call JAMAICA CARES. So now, through JAMAICA CARES, we are focused on welcoming Generation Z travelers, alleviating their concerns about health and well-being while traveling, while ensuring the perfect implementation of protocols and measures security, including testing.
JAMAICA CARES truly galvanizes our COVID tourism response. We are agile and resilient. We combine a comprehensive, broad-based approach with a laser-like focus, committed to providing the highest level of health to visitors, tourism workers and local communities. For example, we have established the first resilient corridor, and this corridor is where we have –
– Well, following what you are seeing there, how difficult has it been for Jamaica to get the vaccines? We know that countries around the world have been challenged with this. I believe that this week, a nurse from Jamaica was the first to receive the vaccine, so what is Jamaica’s position when it comes to access?
EDMUND C. BARTLETT: Well, access for us has been, perhaps, as difficult as the first 100 countries that received it. We have received approximately 14,000 doses administered in the past few days and we hope that by the end of March, we would have administered approximately 16% of our population. It hasn’t been easy, because, you know, WHO is the standard bearer.
They determine which vaccines are approved and when we can get them. But the other problem, of course, as you know, is that the largest and wealthiest countries have literally monopolized the vaccine market. So they already had more than 80% of all the vaccine produced, and that is what the smaller, developing countries are in a really difficult position for.
So many of us have been struggling. In fact, we paid for a vaccine, which was not delivered. Dates have been established, and new dates are also established. Well, thank goodness, we started. And we hope that by the end of this year, we will have served more than 60% of our population.
– You know, the JAMAICA CARES program looks attractive, and we should highlight, in 2020, in January 2020, there were 227,200 visitors to Jamaica. In January of this year, it had, understandably, dropped to 43,831, but I imagine it is growing. Do you have a date when you think tourism will return to normal numerical trends for Jamaica?
EDMUND C. BARTLETT: I think that by 2022, 23, we should see this normality. I hope that this year, for example, will continue to be slow. The summer is expected to increase, because the USA is a big market. The UK has shown good signs of vaccination, hoping to have more than 50% of its population vaccinated. We should see some gushing and turning in the summer, and then we are going to build from there. And I believe that 2023, we should go back to normal.
– And 2023, not far away, just a few years. What do you expect tourists to find in Jamaica? Will the experience be different, now, post-pandemic than it was pre-pandemic? Or is it exactly the same experience, fantastic?
EDMUND C. BARTLETT: It will not be exactly the same experience at all. It will be a higher level of protection, security, much more emphasis, of course, on health standards, and also, to ensure that we have the infrastructure to allow the visitor to have the same wonderful and beautiful Jamaican scenery that they have always enjoyed. having our music, reggae, you know, all the wonderful physical characteristics that characterized our landscape, the adventures of adrenaline, events and so on, but in different circumstances and with much more emphasis on the use of technology for safety, protection and perfection.
– We wish you all the best in Jamaica, and many of us are looking forward to going back and visiting your country once again. Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism of Jamaica, thank you very much.