AI comes into focus at JAPEX 2023

Digital marketing and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the future of tourism will be a top agenda item during the annual Jamaica Product Exchange (JAPEX), to be held at the Montego Bay Conference Centre, St James, from September 11-13. This is the first in-person hosting of the event since 2019, when COVID-19 crippled public gatherings.

Nicola Madden-Greig, chair of the JAPEX planning committee, made the disclosure yesterday during a press conference at the Courtleigh Hotel and Suites, New Kingston.

“We will also have a session on digital marketing which will be presented by the JTB (Jamaica Tourism Board) as well as a session that is going to be talking about AI and how do we implement strategies in terms of artificial intelligence in the business of tourism and ensuring we use that to our advantage,” she told journalists.

Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett expounded on the matter, explaining that tourism is going through a new phase.

“We have a changing dynamic. It’s amazing who the new tourists are, with the traditional market as we knew them, not necessarily giving way to the new but becoming part of a bigger market structure that technology and virtualisation, digitisation have come to redefine.

“So access has now become not the preserve of the powerful and the rich and the technologically savvy, but has now become the preserve of everyone. Communication, like knowledge, has moved from the centre to the peripheries… . We’ve incentive knowledge and information and ideas because it is new ideas that are going to determine how competitive we remain in the market and what is going to bring people here for the authentic Jamaican experience,” he declared.

Madden-Greig also disclosed that there will be a focus on health and wellness, as well as looking at how to extract more business from the diaspora.

“This is a market that was very strong for us during the pandemic and it is something that we at the ministry, the JTB and the JHTA (Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association) feel is a market we want to grow,” she shared.

Meanwhile, Robin Russell, president of the JHTA, disclosed that enthusiasm for the JAPEX as the premier Caribbean market place had not diminished. This was reflected in the 236 delegates already registered, along with 102 buyers, 132 buyer suppliers, 20 countries represented and two global media houses.

This compares with the 2019 staging where 81 buyer companies with 117 delegates and 91 supplier companies with 220 delegates were in attendance.

christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com