AT the 2023 Jamaica Product Exchange trade show in Montego Bay on September 11, Jamaica’s Director of Tourism Mr Donovan White said the country was on course to welcome 3.88 million visitors, including 2.74 million stopovers by the end of the year.

Mr White claimed then that arrivals for this country’s multi-billion US-dollar industry would increase to 4.59 million in 2024, and five million in 2025.

Early this month, Tourism Minister Mr Edmund Bartlett cited preliminary figures from the Jamaica Tourist Board showing that, “Over the period July 1 to September 30, 2023 Jamaica welcomed some 682,586 stopover arrivals, representing a 5.5 per cent increase compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year.”

That booming growth in Jamaica’s tourism contextualises the announcement from American Airlines that scheduled passenger flights twice weekly from Miami to Ian Fleming International Airport — at Boscobel in St Mary, close to Ocho Rios — will begin next February.

The original plan for the service to have started in November last year was delayed to facilitate navigational improvements.

Enthusiasm among tourism stakeholders, captured by Executive Editor Mr Vernon Davidson’s article in yesterday’s Sunday Observer, highlights the long-standing need to make it easier for visitors to get to places like St Mary and Portland.

Traditionally, many, if not most of those who visit those parts — embracing some of the most scenic spots to be found anywhere in the world — are middle-aged to older Europeans. They are usually longer-stay visitors who are very much into nature tours — hiking, rafting on the Rio Grande and so forth — in addition to experiencing some of our more pleasant, unspoilt beaches.

For many of those visitors, mixing with locals provides an added attraction.

Some may feel that two flights weekly bringing 76 passengers each won’t make a big difference for the bourgeoning visitor sector. That’s a static view.

We believe that this start by American Airlines is just the thin edge of a wedge that is going to make much larger inroads as demand for a varied Jamaican experience grows.

Indeed, we expect that the late Mr Gordon “Butch” Stewart’s dream of an extended runway at Ian Fleming Airport to accommodate large passenger aircraft won’t be long in coming.

Back in 2013 Mr Stewart said: “The current runway is 4,780 feet long but the big regional carriers … need a minimum of 5,000 to 5,700 feet. Ian Fleming needs only an additional 800 or 900 feet, which is really not much, to accommodate those big jets.

“I have talked to all these airlines and they can’t wait. They have told me they would fly to Ian Fleming the day after the runway is so extended…”

Also it should be recognised that, in very short order, ongoing highway development will open up the eastern end of the island to rapid tourism and related economic growth.

In fact, we believe leaders and planners at central Government and local levels, and in fact all Jamaicans, should prepare themselves for the probability of a scale of expansion which some of us may not even be able to imagine right now.