Jamaica Businesses Advised to Market Better

Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, has advised business owners to pursue smarter, more effective marketing strategies in order to maintain market share during these turbulent economic times.

Addressing a function to launch the Jamaica Employers Federation’s, (JEF) 27th Annual Business and Workplace Convention and Exposition 2009, at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston last week, Mr. Bartlett said the ministry has taken the position that “now is the time for us to spend on marketing because maintaining your market share is everything”.

He said that the strategy is bearing fruit with the country maintaining as well as “stealing” market share, which has resulted in an increase in the number of Canadian tourists visiting the island. He said that in November last year, the Canadian market increased by 53 per cent, and at the end of December, some 230,000 Canadians had visited the island.

“We did that because we took market share from the Dominican Republic, Cancun and Cuba. We were able to do that because we have been very active in the marketplace, and also because we have expanded brands in the accommodation sub-sector to include a number of brands that are known in Canada already,” he pointed out.

Suggesting other ways in which businesses can remain afloat as the world economic crisis deepens, the Tourism Minister said it is important to remain on the cutting edge of technology. “You have to design and determine new ways, methods, processes on a daily basis, and to be able to do that, you need to know what is happening around you,” he noted.

Bartlett said further that during this financial climate, where yields from products are lower, the value of goods or services must remain high, while prices remain competitive.

Bartlett has held up Jamaica as a good example of a tourism destination in the Caribbean that is still growing even in these turbulent times. He credited that to the fact that the government has responded faster to the economic downturn than many others within the region.