Jamaica tourism

Jamaica is in the middle of its largest hotel investment cycle in a generation, with several billion dollars of new resort and residential development at various stages of planning and construction. A look at the pipeline, the projects, the players, and the environmental and access questions they raise.

As Jamaica breaks ground on the US$1 billion Harmony Cove resort in Trelawny and a new wave of north coast investment accelerates, NEPA’s first Coral Reef Awareness Month puts the ecological stakes of the island’s development boom in sharp focus.

GDP grows 1.7% — a moderation to a slower but more sustainable pace as the post-pandemic recovery cycle maturesInflation falls…

Record sargassum levels in the Caribbean in 2025 swamped Jamaica’s beaches with unprecedented volumes of rotting seaweed. The crisis is reshaping where tourists choose to go, what hotels can offer, and how the island plans for a future of annual inundations.

A new condition attached to major resort approvals in Trelawny and St Ann requires developers to provide physical public access corridors to the beach. It may be the most significant practical change in how Jamaica manages its coastline in a generation.

Jamaica’s beachfront real estate market continues to attract premium prices even as the scientific case for its long-term vulnerability strengthens. How investors, buyers, and banks are — or are not — pricing climate risk into the island’s most coveted coastal properties.

Tourism exceeds pre-pandemic records with 3.10 million arrivals and US$3.8 billion in receipts — the sector’s best performance in Jamaica’s…

GDP grows 4.0% — the second consecutive year of recovery growth, sustaining momentum even as global conditions deteriorateInflation reaches 10.2%…

Tourism is the economic lifeline that underpins employment, foreign exchange earnings and government revenue across Jamaica, making the agencies responsible for its development among the most consequential in the public sector. A performance audit of

GDP grows 4.6% — the strongest single-year expansion since the early 2000s, as a pandemic-suppressed economy begins its reopeningTourism recovers…

COVID-19 brings the Jamaican economy to a near-halt: GDP contracts 9.9% — the sharpest single-year decline in the island’s modern…

In 2021 Jamaica faces a double crisis: a global pandemic that has devastated its tourism-dependent economy and a domestic murder rate that reaches approximately 49 per 100,000 population — among the highest ever recorded. The Andrew Holness government, re-elected in September 2020 with an enlarged majority, is simultaneously managing the pandemic response, negotiating vaccine access, and deploying States of Public Emergency in Jamaica’s most violent communities.

Unemployment falls to 7.7% — a record low in Jamaica’s modern economic history, below the double-digit rates that persisted through…

January and February 2020 delivered some of Jamaica’s strongest tourism numbers on record. Hotels were full, coastal construction was advancing, and the beach access debate was accelerating. Then, in March, the pandemic changed everything. This quarterly report covers Q1 2020 — the last season Jamaica’s coast operated as usual.

The final quarter of 2019 brought Jamaica’s best-ever tourism numbers, the commercial enclosure of Little Dunn’s River, and a coastal access movement that was moving from protest to litigation. Q4 2019 was the season the beach rights argument became impossible for policymakers to ignore.