Tourism Ministry Launches 90 Days of Summer

Tourism Minister, Hon. Dr. Wykeham McNeill, on Wednesday, July 16, officially launched the ‘Jamrock Summer – 90 Days 90 Ways’ programme, which is aimed at promoting Jamaica as a year-round entertainment destination.

The launch, which took place at Sandals Royal Caribbean Hotel in Montego Bay, will see a major push being made towards attracting international visitors to the island, as well as encouraging Jamaicans to support local entertainment activities across the country.

“We have taken all of our events that are going on during these 90 days of summer and packaged them in a way that it is easy to sell. From the festivals to culinary activities, sporting activities and fashion shows… For years, people see Jamaica as a place they can escape for the winter so we are now pushing to promote Jamaica as a place where they can go and enjoy themselves during the summer,” the Minister said.

He informed that the initiative is being spearheaded by the Entertainment Board, and is a concept on which work started over a year ago. He said that the response from the stakeholders has been very encouraging.

“Once they (the stakeholders) are participating in these activities, it earns more for Jamaica which is the bottom line. We want to constantly increase the number of visitors but we also want to increase the spend of each visitor,” he pointed out.

The Ministry and the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) are funding the initiative and Dr. McNeill informed that there is no new budget for the promotion.

“What we have done is to pull it all together and packaged it…put websites together, put the marketing together, working with the JTB and put a booking engine behind the websites. It’s not a lot of money…you are using activities that are there…what you are really doing is to increase the marketing of those activities…it’s an on-going practice that we have and it’s not a huge spend,” he explained.

The ‘90 days, 90 ways’ programme runs from the Memorial Weekend through to Labour Day in the United States, covering the months of June, July and August.