The Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, recently announced that the ministry will be undertaking a major agreement with Airbnb in order to help grow their tourism industry. In Jamaica alone there are already thousands of sites listed by active hosts in the country and there have been at least 4,000 active listings just in the last year alone.
It is estimated that Airbnb is responsible for helping to bring in over 32,000 new tourists to the island, and Jamaican officials want to work together to increase that number.
The market for Airbnb options in Jamaica is rapidly growing, as it is for many other areas around the world. And Jamaican officials want to make it easier to work together, as far as collective resource management goes, on building a better platform for travel marketing and more.
People don't only have to choose a hotel anymore on the island when they are looking for affordable and convenient rental options, they are free to browse through a number of other options via Airbnb, looking to rent private homes and private spaces in homes that have hosts etc.
Airbnb currently has listings in thousands of cities around the world, in more than 190 countries.
Earlier this year, Jamaican officials insisted that they were in contact with Airbnb in order to start the motion for collecting taxes from their users. They also want to ensure that the properties being listed on the site are ones that are of good quality standards, despite there already being a feedback mechanism on the site that helps users to determine this.
The Jamaica Tourism Board (JTB) showed that from December 2014 to March 2015, there were 590,000 stopover visits alone, that's just 3+ months. Arrivals to the country by both sea and air increased in 2015, to more than 1.93 million by just the end of the summer. And in 2014 they saw a total of 3.5 million visitors.
Thanks to the success of their tourism industry, they are able to pull-in billions of dollars every single year from it. Their GDP is only estimated to be around $14 billion for 2015, so it's clear that the tourism industry really has a lot of influence financially; as far as furthering the success of the country.
pics:
pixabay
Sources:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Jamaica-to-sign-major-agreement-with-Airbnb#poll
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20150517/2015-shaping-another-record-year-tourism
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Record-tourist-arrivals-expected-for-2015_19226789
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/jamaica/gdp
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20160624/tourism-ministry-seeking-collect-taxes-airbnb-users