Business View Caribbean | April 2019

24 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN APRIL 2019 pictured Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism for Jamaica 3. Health and Wellness is another major element of the experience. A lot of work is being done on building out the nutraceutical values of cannabis, for example, as a main lever for spas and health and wellness facilities. We’re looking at how to utilize more Jamaican herbs and plants to create new nutraceutical values for scrubs, and wraps, and ointments, and alternative medical applications. Cannabis is not yet an industry in Jamaica, it’s still within the scale of those to be formalized. But our focus is on the medical applications. 4. Activities. The Jamaica Rum Festival is new. After that, we have the Coffee Festival, and we’re looking at establishing the Cocoa Festival (cocoa is the feedstock for chocolate). Jamaica’s outstanding cocoa fruit makes some of the best chocolate. Little known fact: Cadbury Chocolate had its origins in Jamaica from that same cocoa feedstock. World- wide, 88 percent of travel is for food experiences, and 66 percent for shopping. We plan to look at new fiscal incentives to encourage more shopping and bring some of the big retail brands and unique companies into the experience. We also want to attract more of the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Events) market. We have a very attractive convention center now. All these things go back to the passion points – the reasons why people travel. 5. Training and development of the human resource. To build the capacity of our workers to produce more, give better service, have a greater sense of innovation, and become entrepreneurs in the employment space. This will be the differentiator in a very competitive market that is possibly in danger of being commoditized. With an industry that is growing like tourism, it’s not just about price, because we in Jamaica would never be able to compete in price because of economy of scale. But we can compete in terms of comparative advantage, quality, exceptional service, and different experiences.” BVC: How important are small businesses to the tourism offering? Minister Bartlett: “A little known fact: 80 percent of global tourism is driven by small and medium enterprises, but only 20 percent of the returns from tourism go to that group. We recognize that something is wrong with that picture. So, Jamaica pioneered a whole global campaign on building out the importance of small and medium tourism