At the 6th edition of the annual Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett says Jamaican coffee has the potential to attract tourists to the Caribbean island nation, launching the notion of coffee tourism.

Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Festival is one of the leading cultural and economic events held in the Caribbean country every year and organised in the backdrop of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Blue & Crow Mountains, it promotes Jamaican coffee and culture.

Speaking at the recently-held 6^th edition of the festival at Newcastle in St Andrew, Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett noted that Jamaican coffee could be a main attraction for tourists who are interested in experiential travel.

“For us in Jamaica to be able to attract a varied demography, all types of people from all over the world, we have to increase the offerings of experience and a key area that we can maximise this experiential tourism is coffee,” Bartlett said.

“Coffee has the capacity to be utilised in many areas and we want to tap into this very large and elongated coffee chain,” he added.

Bartlett said there was potential to build a coffee innovation town in the hills of St Andrew and possibly Buff Bay on the other side of the hill where the various attributes of coffee can be utilised to bring economic well-being to people and to bring pleasure and joy and satisfaction.