Jamaica’s stopover arrivals for 2018 approached 2.5 million — another record — as the island’s villa and vacation rental sector continued its rapid expansion on Airbnb and competing platforms. Internationally, Japan’s Minpaku Law came into force in June and immediately reshaped the world’s largest STR market, demonstrating both the power and the limits of regulatory intervention in a platform-driven accommodation economy.

Jamaica’s tourism sector posted another half-year of solid growth in the first six months of 2017, as Zika fears that had suppressed Caribbean travel in 2016 faded from the foreground of traveller decision-making. The island’s Airbnb listing count continued to expand, the STR sector’s contribution to tourism accommodation grew, and the regulatory vacuum that had characterised the sector since Airbnb’s Caribbean arrival remained entirely unaddressed.