MONTEGO BAY, St James —Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says preliminary figures indicate that the country last year earned US$1.97 billion from tourism, despite the global economic recession.

“The earning last year will work out to be about .9 per cent below the earning for the previous year,” Bartlett said. “Although that is regarded in the industry as flat, it indicates tremendous performance given the global economic downturn and the level of price adjustments that were given in order to compete on quality and price.”

At the same time, the tourism minister said indications are that stop-over arrivals for 2009 grew by four per cent over the corresponding year.

“We are closing in on our final figures, and projections are that we are closing off somewhere in the region of about 1.83 million arrivals (stop-over), which would be a record for the country,” said an upbeat Bartlett.

The tourism minister was speaking at an appreciation luncheon for western media practitioners at Sandals Montego Bay Resorts on Friday.

He argued that “the excellent” performance by the sector was due mainly to a 26.3 per cent growth in the Canadian market; increased airlifts and aggressive marketing by the Jamaica Tourist Board.