THE mostly positive vibes coming from this week’s Sunday Observer report on the upcoming winter tourist season couldn’t have come at a better time.

As we all know, Jamaica has been hit hard by the global economic recession of the past year or so. Scores of businesses have had to close their doors, thousands have lost jobs and most crucially perhaps, the bauxite/alumina sector — a decades-old cornerstone of the national economy — has been slashed in half because of a fall-off in global demand.

Jamaica’s land-based tourism sector, while more than holding its own in the context of the wider Caribbean, has also felt the pinch with many of our hotels — large and small — being forced to operate at heavily discounted rates.

The Government has found itself with its back to the wall and struggling to meet commitments. The circumstances have forced Mr Bruce Golding’s administration to return to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seeking to rekindle a borrowing relationship ended more than a decade ago. That agreement is expected to be finalised very soon. Since Jamaicans know from hard experience that IMF borrowing agreements come with tough conditionalities, there has been much ‘doom and gloom’ in the air.

So it is then that the statement from Mr John Lynch, director of tourism and chairman of the Jamaica Tourist Board that “barring any natural calamity Jamaica will have a very good winter season, and I think the country will earn the same or maybe a bit more from tourism than we did last year, which was our best ever” sounds akin to manna from heaven. We are told that Jamaica earned US$1.539 billion from tourism in 2008.

The ever optimistic tourism minister, Mr Edmund Bartlett, tells us that Jamaica has already raked in US$1.533 billion for January to October of 2009, compared to all of last year which, he says, “is why we are projecting a slight increase over last year for earnings”.

Hefty discounting apart, extensive promotion and marketing not just by the Jamaica Tourist Board but also by hotel chains, including Sandals, SuperClubs and the Spanish operators, have apparently made a big difference. To such an extent that the Canadian market, for example, grew to 233,335 for the period up to October, compared to 180,000 arrivals for the same period last year.

We have no doubt that the continuing freshness and vibrancy of the Jamaica brand has also been a tremendous help. The run-ins with the powerful gay lobby notwithstanding, Jamaican music continues to be a big positive. And the boost from the wondrous achievements of Mr Usain Bolt and his fellow athletes over the past two years will have been huge.

From this distance it would seem that the high levels of crime remain the biggest negative insofar as Jamaica’s tourism is concerned. If in a time of arguably the worst economic recession of modern times, Jamaica’s tourism can still show growth, let’s imagine what would happen should the nation and its leaders finally locate the political will to deal with criminals. To begin with, we surely wouldn’t need the IMF.