Jamaica and Guyana sign tourism framework for training and travel links

Jamaica and Guyana have signed a tourism cooperation agreement aimed at strengthening training, investment and travel connections between the two destinations.

The Gleaner reported the agreement on October 12. Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett and Guyana’s Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce Susan Rodrigues signed it on October 9 at the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s State of the Tourism Industry Conference in Georgetown. Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs separately confirms the signatories and signing date.

The memorandum of understanding establishes a framework for hospitality education and training, tourism investment promotion, air connectivity, sustainable development and tourism resilience. It also provides for multi-destination travel—journeys that combine destinations instead of treating each country as a separate holiday option.

The partnership brings together Jamaica’s established resort, cultural and entertainment industry and Guyana’s forests, biodiversity, rivers, wildlife and Indigenous heritage. The ministers presented these different offerings as a basis for cooperation, with Jamaica able to share experience in destination management, hospitality skills and resilience.

Bartlett said the objective included developing local capacity and retaining greater value from tourism for Caribbean people. The agreement’s intended benefits remain goals: the announcement did not set out specific joint projects, financial commitments or an implementation timetable.

Rodrigues said Guyana welcomed a record 453,489 visitors in 2025 and recorded 360,623 arrivals in the first nine months of 2026. The periods differ, so the two totals should not be treated as a direct annual growth comparison.

She said 12 additional airlines had entered the market since 2020, extending connections with North America, Europe, the Caribbean and South America. Nine internationally branded hotels had also entered the market, expanding accommodation for business and leisure travel.

The country had hosted more than 18 conferences and major business events in 2026, the Gleaner reported. That activity forms part of its efforts to attract meetings and business visitors alongside leisure travellers.

Rodrigues said the purpose of tourism growth was broader than increasing arrival totals. She identified opportunities for farmers, fishermen, drivers, artisans, guides and small entrepreneurs, linking the sector to the government’s economic diversification strategy.

She also urged Caribbean destinations to collaborate through improved regional air connectivity, shared tourism information, stronger destination linkages and joint marketing. This would require cooperation among tourism stakeholders as well as the exchange of government expertise envisaged in the MOU.

Environmental protection was a condition of that development agenda. Rodrigues said tourism’s prosperity depended on safeguarding Guyana’s natural and cultural assets.

The signed framework therefore sets a broad direction for cooperation. The arrangements that would turn it into particular investments, training programmes or linked travel products remain to be specified.