KINGSTON, Jamaica – Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says most of the jobs lost in the tourism sector following the passage of Hurricane Melissa last October, have since retuned.
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Tourism Minister Edmund BartlettThose that aren’t… there are stages of that recovery, because all the hotels have kept the skeleton staff… so they really have not let everyone out,” Bartlett said, noting that “there are about 11,000 rooms that are to come back on stream… and if we work at one-to-one, that’s about 11,000 workers that are now to come back”.
Bartlett said that a significant number of workers were affected by the passage of the hurricane.
“In the hotels alone, they directly employ approximately 60,000 people and then, of course, the other areas that are aligned with us… the attractions and so on. So, I would say that we had a 30 per cent hit… so pretty close to 15,000/20,000 workers,” he said in highlighting the hurricane’s impact on the sector.
Category Five Hurricane Melissa made landfall on October 28, 2025, leaving many hotels and attractions at varying levels of destruction. The storm which killed 45 people left an estimated US$9.9 billion in damages.
On Wednesday, Finance and the Public Service Minister, Fayval Williams, told a news conference that based on what was projected right after the aftermath of Melissa relative to what’s happening now, the island’s economic recovery is on the way.
She said 22 years ago, a storm like Melissa meant Jamaica would have had to enter into a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Bartlett said approximately 15,000 hotel rooms were out of service in the aftermath of the hurricane.
“About 6,000 were reopened over the period, and we have 9,000 to go… and the rate at which we are going, we should make that 9,000 complete by the first quarter of 2027,” he added.
He said that the sector has made steady progress as the 2026/27 winter tourist season approaches. The season is officially scheduled to commence on December 15.
“We will start the winter tourist season with just about 80 per cent of our capacity; so, the other 20 per cent will come on stream between January and March… April of 2027. Currently, our capacity for accommodation, formal accommodation, is 70 per cent… and we will get to 80 per cent by December. But our actual arrival into the country is running at 80 per cent of last year,” he said.
Bartlett said that the accommodation subsector, Airbnb, has been making a significant impact on the tourism industry.
“So, we are really ahead of our room count at the moment. Airbnb has done the filling in, because most of those people have gone to the villas, apartments, and private homes,” he said, pointing out that the full extent of the reduction in the sector’s fallout will become clearer by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
“You are going to see the growth in terms of the recovery as more hotel rooms come, for example, into the inventory… as more economic activity is generated by tourism. Bear in mind that tourism… is a huge driver of consumption… and at every point of consumption, it’s revenue that is driven. So even the GCT (general consumption tax) which is applied at the various points of consumption inures to the increase in revenue overall to government and recovery.
“So, we can say in tourism that (the ministry) is well positioned to maintain growth, and that growth will definitely be realised,” Bartlett added.
