Source::BreakingTravelNews
With the '60 for 60' tourism campaign and an earlier agreement signed with Spain, Jamaica has doubled down in 2022 for being the year to boost its tourism and travel industry. One of the main partners that they have been eyeing up is Sauid Arabia with an agreement with the Middle Eastern nation to bring the two closer together in the tourism sector.
This agreement has been a positive development for the travel and tourism sector in both nations. Jamaica, being from the Caribbean has been heavily reliant on tourism. In Jamaica, the direct impact of tourism accounts for 10 per cent of GDP but if you include positive externalities and indirect contribution, it accounts for a whopping 35 per cent of the GDP, with about 170,000 being employed directly by tourism.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been trying to advertise itself as a tourists hotspot in recent years, looking for investment and opportunities. Under the Saudi Vision 2030, tourism is one of the main contributors of income that will replace its oil dependency so construction partnerships and relationships like this have been invaluable to Saudi Arabia
Both countries had initiated talks between each other in 2021 on ways to collaborate on rebuilding their tourism sectors after the wake of the pandemic. Talks between the countries have been held many times. The Jamaican minister of tourism had talked to this Spanish counterpart in the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Now there are plans for operating Saudi carriers to allow routes from Middle Eastern countries to visit the Caribbean without passing through the US, reducing bureaucratic hurdles.
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