Tourism booms in Jamaica after pandemic, overwhelms airport

AP | The number of tourists flocking to Jamaica’s sun-drenched beaches soared nearly 100 percent in the first 3 months of the year, causing long queues and hours-long waits for arriving passengers at the island-nation’s main airport.

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett told The Associated Press that the problem stemmed from a shortage of airport staff to process the unexpected volume of people flying into Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay since the end of the pandemic.

Bartlett told Parliament later that day that there were 1.18 million arrivals from January through March – 94 percent more than the same period of 2022 and a record high for Jamaica’s tourism high season.

“The recovery has been stronger than anticipated and everybody all over the world is having difficulty with their airports because many of the workers have not come back,” Bartlett said.

He said authorities plan to spend more on technology as they strive to do away with paperwork at the airport, including ending a requirement for visitors to fill out a form upon arrival.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the problems at Sangster underscore the need to push through the US$70 million modernization and expansion project that already was underway.

The work is scheduled to be completed by 2025, and Honess said the improvements at the Caribbean’s largest and busiest airport “will make Jamaica more attractive and make Jamaica more competitive with other countries in the region, which have also invested heavily in improving their infrastructure.”

As part of the project, the runway is being lengthened at a cost of US$34 million, work that is expected to be finished in June.

“We are excited about the prospects of Sangster being able to accommodate these mega airlines that will be flying to Jamaica and the Caribbean,” Bartlett said during the AP interview last week.

He said the Tourism Ministry’s growth plan aims to have the island draw 5 million visitors annually by 2025. That would be a 35 percent increase from Jamaica’s peak of 3.7 million tourists in 2022.

Bartlett said Asian and Middle Eastern countries are among the new markets being targeted and the airport must be able to accommodate the larger aircraft that would be used on such long-haul flights.

In 2019, before the pandemic, the airport processed 4.7 million passengers, including citizens and visitors. The number of tourists to Jamaica peaked at 3.7 million in 2022, 70 percent of whom used the Sangster gateway.

Sangster is managed by MBJ Airports Ltd. The consortium, which has a 30-year concession that began in 2003, said it spent US$287 million to improve the airport in the first 18 years of the deal.

Among the improvements, the airport operator has expanded the immigration hall and departure lounge. The check-in area was recently outfitted with 60 self-service kiosks, with plans to install more, to reduce passenger processing and waiting times.