Jamaica takes aim at digital and data-driven tourism

WESTERN BUREAU:

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has said that local tourism stakeholders and their global counterparts will no longer have the luxury of hoarding ideas but will now be forced to cooperate if they hope to attain sustainability and growth.

Additionally, Bartlett says that the future of tourism is going to be locked into digital activities that will feature a great deal more analytical work and the mining of data connection.

“We are also going to have to look at new ways of collaborating and managing. And more recently, there is this concept of competition, which is emerging as to how people share knowledge and information to achieve objectives rather than to hoard ideas and to keep it to themselves and seek to compete,” said Bartlett.

The tourism minister was speaking at Saturday’s launch of Key Advantage Training and Recruitment Solutions Company, which is seeking to enhance the competence and quality of the Jamaican workplace.

“We are putting aside competition for cooperation, and it is that level of collaborative activity that is going to make things happen, and training is critical to that,” said Bartlett. “Training in how to recognise and convert, and being able to do that is going to set you aside.”

“That’s why we have established the blue ocean strategy as a marketing tool for Jamaican tourism strategies for the future,” added Bartlett.

He went on to explain that with the establishment of the blue ocean strategy marketing tool now being used by the Jamaica Tourist Board, the country has no interest in attracting its visitors from the same area as everyone else is now doing.

“We are not interested in competing in the same sea as everybody else. We are creating our own. A more distinct and innovative marketing strategy. It is built on creating products that are unique and experiences that are not had by other people,” said Bartlett.

As for Key Advantages, Bartlett said that their entry into the industry is timely and that its offerings are critical for the future of tourism.

“You are now creating a space that will respond to any type of demands that tourism brings, and that’s exciting,” said Bartlett, in projecting Key Advantages as a new data-driven hospitality training recruitment and solutions company.

“You are not into the old, and tired. You are looking into the future, and you are creating the skill set that we are going to need,” stated Bartlett.

Ann-Marie Goffe-Pryce, the founder and chief executive officer of Key Advantages, says that her company will provide workers in the tourism industry and other service-related industries with a master key to unlock their true potential in the delivery of world-class services that will foster visitor satisfaction.

“The general objective of our training and recruitment offerings is to propel people and organisations, particularly those in the hospitality, business process outsourcing, sales, and retail industries, towards greater success,” said Goffe-Pryce.