Jamaican youth want a bigger bite of the tourism pie

MONTEGO BAY, St James – Reserving more management positions for local tourism industry workers and improving linkages are among the suggestions from young Jamaicans asked for solutions to keeping more of their revenues from the sector.

“Especially with what leadership roles in tourism look like these days, we also need to consider our employees to help them climb the ladder. There are plenty of jobs in tourism, but we really need to ensure that many of the higher-income jobs are also filled by locals and Jamaicans,” said Katrina Chin, president of the Tourism Society at the University of the West Indies. Observer from Jamaica.

She also spoke about the need to improve the quality of available jobs.

“Last year I spoke in the Youth Parliament about underemployment. We have a lot of work. More people are employed, but what they are employed for is a bigger question,” Chin added.

She was one of four panelists on Wednesday’s youth panel discussion at the Montego Bay Convention Center in St James.

The discussion on “Youth as a catalyst for change”, moderated by children’s book author Amashika Lorne, was part of the Youth Tourism Forum 2024, which was among the activities planned for Tourism Week. The celebration is held under the slogan “Tourism and Peace: Out of Many, One Love”.

Panelist and 2024 Prime Minister’s Award winner Odane Brooks also shared his views.

“If we are going to sustain and retain people here in Jamaica, we need to be able to leverage local industry to provide opportunities for our workers. So while the tourism sector is performing well, we must continue to look for ways to retain more of the revenue so that those in local communities can benefit and see the benefits of this industry,” he said
Observer.

Brooks also identified holes that need to be plugged to preserve tourism revenues.

“A lot of it leaks out through imports, which hotels can do. We therefore need to see greater links with sectors such as agriculture. Therefore, St Elizabeth farmers need to have a direct connection to the tourism sector where they can filter their produce to hotels,” Brooks suggested.

“In construction, including advertising, a large part of the money from tourism is wasted on advertising. So we need to build and develop local production capacity so that we can use local production to reduce leakages,” he added.

Chin shared similar views.

“Increasing our connections so that we can reach out to other sectors and be able to source them as well. We talked about it. Odane Brooks talked about where we need economies of scale, where we can lower the price of our own goods. But this is also where we start to improve the links and connections between other industries so that other people can make money and be part of tourism as well,” Chin said.

For his part, 2024/25 junior tourism minister Taj Melbourne agreed with Chin and Brooks, adding that profits retained in the sector should be used to develop tourism awareness initiatives in schools.

“From my point of view – although I don’t have much knowledge – I would say that based on what I have seen in the tourism industry, it is true what they say. I believe that the more earnings they retain, the best we can develop in our country, and we can come up with initiatives to ensure that each year that we manage to obtain more earnings, we receive a greater percentage of them and retain them and develop our tourism industry, especially for young people,” he said.

“Part of these activities should be devoted to increasing tourism awareness in schools. We don’t have many such activities at school, apart from the Tourism Action Club (TAC Club), which we have,” he added.

“In his message marking the start of the week-long celebration on September 22 during a thanksgiving service at the Family Church in Rock Montego Bay, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett said that last year Jamaica welcomed a record 4.29 million visitors and generated $4.38 billion in earnings.

He stressed that according to preliminary data, since the beginning of 2024, Jamaica has welcomed approximately three million stopover and cruise visitors to the island, earning approximately $3 billion.”

On Wednesday, students from over 20 educational institutions participated in the Youth Tourist Forum 2024.

Tourism Week celebrations continued on Thursday with a gastronomic showcase at Falmouth Artisan Village. The week will end with Out of Many, One Love at Devon House on Friday.