There is a phenomenal potential for us to integrate Jamaica properly in outbound tourism in India: Donovan White
Donovan White
When is Jamaica Tourism Board visiting India?
If I told you a date today, I will be lying. But we are absolutely seized with the need to activate our initial tourism trade mission. Our team in India Trac Representations has been working seriously on our behalf to engage the Indian population, create the right awareness. Our Prime Minister Andrew Holness visited India a few months back before the last election in India where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it was a very successful engagement. We took a lot of good things from that trip because a number of strategic government-to-government business was conducted which will facilitate tourism even better.
Sometimes things take a while, but it is important that you put the right steps in place to ensure that when we do make that trip, we are properly situated and we are enabled to meet and greet and do business with the right people in the marketplace. I think the teams are doing that now. Hence, before the summer of this year, we will definitely be in India.
What kind of response did you get from JAPEX and did you get more traction after hosting Indian market?
There is definitely more inquiry, a need for more information, a need for more collaboration with our tourism partners in Jamaica, and the continued development of the air route strategy to get to Jamaica. This is something that Trac has been working on to ensure that we can communicate clearly and definitively to the travel trade partners in India how to sell Jamaica and how to get to Jamaica. Hence, it has been happening. We have seen some slight increases in the number of Indians arriving in Jamaica over the last two years, which is encouraging given that we have not done any major consumer engagement in the marketplace yet.
Thus, there is a phenomenal potential for us to integrate Jamaica properly in outbound tourism in India. We believe there is an obvious synergy to be had between our efforts here in the Middle East and North African region particularly in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, with our efforts in India because we believe that there are some similarities in the tourism trade business between two regions and so we intend to use that to our advantage as well so that where we are engaged with businesses in the GCC that have tourism businesses in India that we can extend that relationship and vice versa. Hence, the two regions can almost co-exist in one marketing and one trade engagement to ensure that we are maximising the effort and return on our investment.
Will you be enhancing your engagement with India at JAPEX?
We intend always to have what we call a new buyer engagement, as JAPEX is a tourism trade floor. Which is about bringing buyers and suppliers together to do business. This year with India and the GCC, we intend to create a new buyer category where we allow companies, who have either not been to Jamaica or are serious and ready to do business with suppliers in Jamaica, to bring them as part of a special envoy group to be hosted by myself and the minister in Jamaica during the passage of JAPEX to ensure that we connect them with the right tourism trade partners in the country and we set the right platform for business to be conducted so that the selling of packages, packaging and selling of packages can begin in earnest. we want to be at the forefront in 2026 and onwards.
You mentioned a slight increase in arrivals from India. Which specific traveller segment contributed to this growth?
Currently, it is FIT. The Indian diaspora in the United States and Canada also stepped up their game as well, and we have witnessed some amount of family travel from Indians from India connecting with families in the US and Canada to go on vacation in Jamaica or to do weddings or other types of events. That is great for us because there is obviously a neat arrangement between families that when they go on vacation, everybody goes together.
The other market that we believe is on the cusp is the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) market. We believe there is a huge opportunity in India, given the size of businesses in the country that take their incentive tours to all over the world, to drive more business and we would like to infuse Jamaica more into that space as well. These are the two areas which we want to focus on. Family, MICE and with family you get weddings and other events.
Have you seen a rise in cruise tourism by Indians in Jamaica?
In terms of cruises in Florida, to be honest I cannot tell you today the level of Indians who come on cruise to Jamaica.
But what can I say that cruises are still a big part of our tourism product. Last year we witnessed 1.3 million cruise visitors. This year, we are forecasting 1.5 million arrivals from the major cruise lines that dock in Jamaica.
Hence, we do know that Indians travel on cruises around the itineraries that are in the region and we expect that as we continue to expand our relationships with the cruiselines we will continue to see more Indians coming to Jamaica on short stay or cruise stays.
In terms of air connectivity, are you seeing greater connectivity emerging from the GCC region or from Türkiye, given that carriers from both regions offer extensive service to India?
We are still in the development stage of air connectivity. We are still creating the building blocks for a long future of tourism from the region.
Last month, Emirates announced a second codeshare here. The first one is with United over the United States and they have announced a second codeshare here to Montego Bay over Frankfurt with Condor. That has been received well and we are obviously working with our trade partners to ensure that we get that populated within the trade here.
This allows Indians to travel via Emirates through Frankfurt to get to Montego Bay. It is a great news, as we are using this event, the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) to also engage with some other airlines, particularly Turkish Air and Qatar Airways, because we believe that the more points of connectivity we can create to facilitate travel, the faster we will be able to grow the market.
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