TORONTO — Jamaica wants 500,000 visitors to Jamaica from Canada by 2025, in what Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett describes as an “ambitious but achievable” target.

Minister Bartlett and his team of senior tourism officials are in Toronto this week for a five-day winter marketing blitz, including meetings with top industry partners and media in the GTA.

“We have an overarching goal to welcome five million visitors and earn five billion dollars in tourism revenue by 2025. Canada is our second largest market and we are currently at just above the 300,000 mark and getting to where we were in 2010 when we had up to 400,000 visitors coming from Canada. My projections are driven by data, and I have evidence now that the Canadian market is ready to take us to half a million visitors within the next two years,” said Minister Bartlett.

“This initiative is about that – getting more airlift. We’re going to be talking with Air Canada, WestJet, Canada Jetlines, our new partners, and others to bolster the airlift out of Canada,” he added.

The Toronto meetings follow discussions held with Canadian travel partners at JAPEX, which wrapped up in Montego Bay last week.

While in Canada, Minister Bartlett will meet with the President and faculty at McMaster University and tour the Miss Lou Archives, housed in the university’s library. Additionally, the tourism minister underscored that Canada would play a strategic role in Jamaica’s efforts to engage the Asian visitor market, including India and China. In keeping with this, he will be the guest speaker at a special event organized by Mandarin Holidays, where more than 100 Chinese travel agents will be in attendance.

Minister Bartlett’s other engagements will include meetings with executives from ACV and Canada Jetlines, as well as travel agents and tour operators. The tourism minister is also scheduled for numerous interviews with various media entities, ranging from print, television and radio, as he seeks to position Jamaica as a destination of choice for Canadian visitors.

Minister Bartlett will depart Canada on Sept. 25 for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where he will join other global tourism leaders including officials from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in marking World Tourism Day 2023 on Sept. 27.

The tourism minister noted that Jamaica is slated to be the toast of this year’s celebration as a model of resilience and people-oriented investments. The UNWTO’s theme for World Tourism Day 2023 is “Tourism and Green Investments” and seeks to highlight the need to focus on investing in people, planet and prosperity.

In Jamaica, Tourism Awareness Week 2023, which runs Sept. 24 – 30, will be observed under the same theme.