Minister Bartlett Heads to Washington DC on April 7 for Four-Day Working Visit

Tourism Minister, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, will arrive in Washington DC on April 7 for an intensive four day programme designed to position Jamaica prominently within the American capital’s diplomatic, academic, and tourism trade corridors.

The visit – anchored in Jamaica’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Melissa and the imperative to sustain momentum in its largest source market – features a diverse programme of engagements.

These include a book launch at the Organization of American States (OAS), receptions hosted by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) and the Embassy of Jamaica, the inaugural Don Hawkins Distinguished Lecture at George Washington University, and executive meetings with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Minister’s programme will open on April 7 with a JTB reception hosting more than 90 travel advisors and trade partners, including 50 of the island’s highest performing sellers in the Northeast United States market.

The function serves as a deliberate first move: before the academic honours and diplomatic ceremonies of the days ahead, Minister Bartlett will stand directly before the men and women whose daily work transforms American consumer interest into confirmed arrivals on Jamaican soil.

JTB Business Development Officer for the Northeast USA, Ricardo Henry, articulated the purpose with clarity.

“The aim is to reconnect with and re-energise our most important link between Jamaica and the visitors to the island, particularly at this time as we fully recover from the ravages of Hurricane Melissa,” he said.

With the Northeast corridor consistently producing Jamaica’s largest volume of stopover arrivals, the reception gives the island’s top commercial allies direct ministerial assurance that Jamaica is open, recovering, and ready.

At 3:00 p.m. on April 8, Minister Bartlett will launch Destination Reputational Resilience: Tourism Crisis Preparedness, Response and Recovery in an Age of Digital Disruption – a major new publication co-authored with Executive Director of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC), Professor Lloyd Waller.

The launch will take place at OAS Headquarters in Washington DC before an audience comprising members of the diplomatic corps and senior regional officials.

Remarks will be delivered by OAS Secretary-General, Ambassador Albert Ramdin, and Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Major General (Ret’d) Antony Anderson.

The publication tackles the very challenges that have defined Minister Bartlett’s tenure – misinformation, cyberthreats, fake news, and the digital disruption of destination reputation – while offering practical frameworks for crisis preparedness and recovery that are immediately relevant to the post-Melissa moment Jamaica is navigating.

On the evening of April 8, the JTB will host a diaspora reception at the Embassy of Jamaica, beginning 6:00 p.m.

The function will be addressed by Minister Bartlett, who will update members of the Jamaican Diaspora community in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) on the tourism industry’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Melissa. Ambassador Anderson will also deliver remarks.

On April 9, proceedings will open at the George Washington University (GWU) School of Business, where Minister Bartlett will deliver the inaugural Don Hawkins Distinguished Lecture at 6:00 p.m.

The lecture honours the legacy of Professor Donald E. Hawkins, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Tourism Policy, who passed away on December 31, 2025, at the age of 89.

Professor Hawkins co-founded GWU’s Master of Tourism Administration programme, established the International Institute of Tourism Studies, earned the UN World Tourism Organization’s Ulysses Prize in 2003, and left a lasting institutional imprint on Jamaica’s tourism education through his foundational role in creating the Jamaica Centre of Tourism Innovation (JCTI).

The evening at Duquès Hall will also feature remarks from GW School of Business Dean, Dr. Sevin Yeltekin and the 2026 MSTHEM Alumni Awards.

The day will also feature a second JTB trade reception – ‘An Evening with the Hon. Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett’ – welcoming approximately 100 travel advisors and trade partners for a strategic briefing on Jamaica’s recovery trajectory and the current state of the tourism product.

Across the course of the visit, Minister Bartlett will hold executive-level meetings with leadership at the World Bank and the IDB – engagements that underscore Jamaica’s positioning of its tourism recovery not merely as a sectoral concern but as a macroeconomic and development finance priority.

The meetings reflect the long-standing understanding, advanced by scholars such as Professor Hawkins, that tourism is a vehicle for sustainable development and resilience, one that requires the full support of multilateral institutions to realise its potential in small island developing states.