Edmund Bartlett, A day late and a dollar short
Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Was A Last Minute No Show At His Own Reception (But His Staff Knew He Never Made The Plane)
It wasn’t a good
sign. An hour late, no one was at the Jamaica Canadian Association Hall microphone
and reporters waiting to meet Jamaica’s Tourism Minister, Edmund Bartlett,
received another round of free drinks.
A few minutes
later, members of the minister’s advance team took to the podium to say that the
Minister was tied up at the Pearson airport and was expected to speak at 8pm –
an hour and half after he was suppose to.
It was a planned
reception that Bartlett had invited prominent Canadian Jamaicans, travel
experts and the media to attend in North Toronto. He wanted to brief Canada on the bullish
state of tourism in Jamaica.
When the Reception
finally started it was announced that the Minister would not be appearing and
apparently he never had intended to show up at all! A video made the day before
was played to the audience of 100, in which the Minister apologized for not
coming to Canada this evening apparently because of government commitments in Kingston.
Second in command, Donovan White, the director of tourism for the
Jamaica Tourist Board, filled in for the missing minister. Although the news was good. It was a strangely
muted talk that drifted from announcing new hotels and new airline partners to
talking about what a dangerous world we all live in!
Quoting from his boss’s note, White told the audience that they were just in
the UK when Thomas Cook Travel went bankrupt.
The island, which faced a potential loss of 1 billion dollars in travel
business, was able to recover all the lost seats.
“Jamaica became the first country to conclude fully, all the arrangements to recover the loss airlift occasioned by the collapse of Thomas Cook,” reported White to a clapping audience.
Other good news? Canada continues to be the third largest
supplier of tourists to Jamaica, approximately 400,000 people in 2018. So far this year there has been an 8.6%
growth in the number of Canadians visiting the island.
Building was the key word of White’s talk. New hotels are being
built. Old hotels are being rebuilt, refurbished and expanded (1,000 new rooms in 2019). New roads are under construction. The Montego Bay
Airport is being expanded and a new cruise ship dock in Port Antonio will soon
open.
“Jamaica is experiencing
record-breaking numbers, undergoing major developments, and receiving global
recognition like never before,” said Donovan White. “Tourism is our largest source
of foreign exchange and our second largest employer!”
Jamaica is a
global destination. In the near future tourists from Canada will find
themselves sharing the beach with travellers from Russian and South
America. Donovan White told the audience
that the South America’s largest airline – Chile’s LATAM air – will soon be flying
three times a week into Jamaica.
Russia is
back this fall flying larger planes than it did in its inaugural season last
year. And the Jamaican government is currently
in talks with Japan to attract new tourism business as well!
When those
new international tourists arrive they can stay in new hotels launched by
European, American and Mexican companies!
So with all
this good news, where is Minister Bartlett taking his bows now? Although he missed the first leg of his Canadian trip he did make it Toronto a day later to meet with Canada's Sun Wings airline this week, albeit a day late.
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