Join Me in Jamaica

The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) is looking to bring more visitors to the island through its new digital marketing campaign.

Dubbed ‘Join me in Jamaica’ the campaign features 90-second promotional videos that showcase snippets of destination Jamaica through the eyes of local celebrities and personalities.

During the first phase of the campaign, a total of eight videos were produced highlighting the country’s music, cuisine and attractions.

Among those featured are singer/songwriter, Tessanne Chin; Chef Martin Maginley of Round Hill Resort and Villas; recording artiste, Konshens; entrepreneur, Edgar “Puddin’ Man” Wallace; restaurateurs, caterers, and authors, the Rousseau Sisters; artist, Ras Natango; coffee expert at Craighton Coffee Estate, Alton Bedward; and entrepreneur and philanthropist, Bruce Croxon.

They share their stories about why they love Jamaica, while offering an invitation for visitors to join them on the island.

The online promotion targets a diverse audience, especially lovers of Jamaican music, cuisine, arts and sports icons and is designed to engage consumers and keep destination Jamaica top of mind.

“These videos will now populate our space – our social space, and we will be able to have connectivity to every corner of the world,” said Minister of Tourism, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, at the launch held at Strawberry Hill Hotel recently.

He said the Ministry will be making greater use of technology in the “new architecture of tourism marketing in Jamaica”.

“We are going to use technology as the driving force to develop a capacity to manage, measure and be in total command of our markets,” he added.

Minister Bartlett noted, however, that the JTB will continue to use traditional marketing platforms to promote destination Jamaica.

“We will never desert our legacy markets. That’s the basis of the sustainability of Jamaica and that’s the 42 per cent repeat business that we have, which makes us the number-one destination in the western world and, arguably, the world, in terms of repeat business, repeat guests,” he said.

Director of Tourism, Donovan White, said the content-rich video series is being used as a means of attracting and engaging potential visitors while capitalising on the power of social media.

He noted that the personalities featured in the videos “were able to, in a very authentic way, tell their own story about why anybody who saw those content pieces should join them in Jamaica, so the campaign became ‘Join me in Jamaica’.”

He stressed that the short videos will serve to entice visitors to come to the island and experience the destination and the people.

The videos are being promoted via the JTB’s digital media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, , as well as through a digital advertising campaign aimed at reaching consumers where they look for inspiration while making travel decisions.

The JTB advises persons to use the following hashtags to join the conversation – #joinmeinjamaica and #visitjamaica.

In the meantime, Mr. White said the Ministry of Tourism will launch a fully integrated website and online travel portal that will “change forever the way we communicate, position and sell the destination of Jamaica’.

“This new data-rich, social media-driven integrated digital platform will evolve on a single axis, which means everything in it is vertically integrated to it… and we will be able to measure and communicate on time, all the time, 24/7, with people who visit the site every day,” he explained.

He said the initiative is in line with the Ministry’s focus on smart tourism, which is the increased reliance on information and communications technology (ICT) to market the destination and manage the distribution of content.

The Ministry has embarked on a five-pillar growth strategy, which includes tapping into new markets, developing new products, accelerating investments, building new partnerships and developing human capital.

The objective is to secure five million visitors by 2021 and generate US$5 billion in tourism earnings, increase the total direct jobs to 125,000 and add 15,000 new hotel rooms by the same timeline.