South American airline operator, COPA, is to start flying to Jamaica, this Sunday.The flights come as part of efforts by the government to boost tourist arrivals out of South America.
COPA is the most connected airline flying from South America in Central America and the Caribbean, and tourism Minister, Ed Bartlett, praised the partnership that is now being developed.
“It is invaluable to us and what it does is to allow for flights to converge on Panama and then from Panama they are taken to Montego Bay, this is one of the most important initiatives to guarantee that the South American market is opened properly for us” he said.
Mr Bartlett says COPA and Jamaica will do joint marketing in the target cities.The advertising support is expected to cost the country half a million U.S. dollars, over the next 12 months.
In the meantime, the Tourism Minister says arrivals continued to increase, up to the end of November.
“The end of November we were 2.6 percent up from last year….that is a six prcent increase over last year . We are seeing a continued trend, December is looking good and we are looking forward to a good winter season” the Tourism Minister said.
He says the forecast is now for stopover arrivals to be 2 and a half to 3 percent higher than last year He added, however, that the strong growth in cruise tourism since the start of the year may well push overall arrivals into double figures.
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