Jamaica | Purkiss Demands Answers as Airfares Bite and Arrivals Slide

Opposition tourism spokesperson says Bartlett made light of Spirit Airlines' collapse — and the June figures now tell a different story

East Hanover MP Andrea Purkiss is calling on Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett to account publicly for a 23.5 per cent fall in stopover arrivals, a recovery that reversed in June, and airfares from South Florida that have climbed beyond US$3,700 — warning that Jamaicans abroad are not staying away so much as being made to pay whatever they are asked.

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, August 29, 2026 - Opposition Spokesperson on Tourism and Linkages, East Hanover Member of Parliament Andrea Purkiss, is demanding that Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett tell the nation what he is doing to arrest the slide in visitor arrivals and the escalating cost of air travel to Jamaica.

Fare checks conducted in the third week of August found American Airlines quoting US$3,744 return between Montego Bay and Miami for travel from 20 to 27 August, with fares of US$3,532 and US$3,472 on adjacent dates. Southwest fares between Montego Bay and Tampa were running near US$1,000, while JetBlue's Fort Lauderdale services were repeatedly sold out.

"Ninety minutes of flying should not cost a Jamaican family what a mortgage payment costs," Ms Purkiss said. "This is not a tourism inconvenience. It is a country being priced away from its own people."

"He Made Light of It"

The Opposition spokesperson pointed directly to the collapse of Spirit Airlines as a contributory factor, and criticised the Minister for what she described as making light of its potential impact on the industry.

When Spirit ceased operations on 2 May, ending thirty-four years of flying and erasing every Jamaican route it operated, Minister Bartlett moved quickly to reassure the sector. Spirit accounted for just under three per cent of passenger load, he said — a projected thirty to forty thousand seats for the summer. Because the carrier flew out of Fort Lauderdale, an airport well served by other airlines, the expectation was that competitors would absorb the displaced traffic.

Ms Purkiss said the assessment measured the wrong thing. The remaining carriers did absorb Spirit's passengers, she noted — and then raised their fares, because the low-cost operator that had been disciplining prices on the corridor was gone.

The Florida market is now effectively partitioned, with American holding Miami, JetBlue holding Fort Lauderdale and Southwest holding Orlando: one carrier to a gateway, with little competitive overlap to restrain pricing.

She said no alternatives appear to have been placed before the public in the four months since.

Our people will find the money for a funeral. That is not proof the fare is fair — it is proof they have no choice.

A Recovery That Went Into Reverse

Jamaica Tourist Board figures released on 17 August record stopover arrivals of 1,131,422 for the first half of the year, against 1,478,168 in the same period of 2025 — a fall of 23.5 per cent. Measured against 2024, before Hurricane Melissa, the shortfall is 25.2 per cent.

The monthly sequence is what concerns the Opposition. January fell 35.5 per cent, February 27.1, March 20.8, April 20.4 and May 18.6 — a deficit narrowing steadily month by month. In June it widened again, to 19.2 per cent: the first month since the downturn began in which the gap grew rather than shrank, and the first full month in which Spirit did not fly.

Ms Purkiss said the Minister owes Parliament an explanation of that reversal. Caribbean Tourism Organization data had already recorded Jamaica's first-quarter decline of 27.5 per cent as the steepest of any destination in the region.

The Comparison the Ministry Cannot Explain Away

The Opposition spokesperson drew particular attention to the breakdown by source market.

Over the six months, arrivals from the United States fell 27.9 per cent and arrivals from Canada 23.4 per cent. Arrivals from Europe fell 6.7 per cent, and in June were flat. European visitors faced the same hurricane, the same shortage of rooms and the same damaged resorts.

What differed, Ms Purkiss said, was airlift: Europe is the one market where Jamaica added capacity, with Virgin Atlantic moving to seven weekly from Heathrow and British Airways to four weekly from Gatwick.

Regional comparison points the same way. Over the first quarter the Dominican Republic grew 12.2 per cent to more than 2.6 million arrivals, the Cayman Islands grew 11 per cent and Nassau grew 4.6 per cent, while Cancún held steady on a far larger base. The Dominican Republic recorded more than 825,000 stopover visitors in January alone — more in a single month than Jamaica managed in three.

The Diaspora Is Not Staying Away. It Is Paying.

Ms Purkiss was careful to correct a misreading of the figures that she said obscures the real hardship.

Non-resident Jamaican arrivals have held up far better than tourist arrivals, rising three per cent in May and 7.6 per cent in June, and falling only 2.6 per cent across the half-year while foreign national arrivals fell 24.9 per cent. That, she said, is not evidence that fares are affordable. It is evidence that Jamaicans abroad have no choice.

"Our people will find the money for a funeral," she said. "They will borrow it, they will beg it, they will empty a savings account for it. That is not proof the fare is fair — it is proof they have no choice, and everybody selling those seats knows it."

Measured against 2024, non-resident Jamaican arrivals are down 16.5 per cent — which is where the families who could not absorb the price went. The pattern shows up in the airport data as well: Sangster International, the tourism gateway, handled 26.7 per cent fewer passengers in the first half of the year, while Norman Manley International in Kingston, through which most returning Jamaicans travel to reach family in the east and south-east, was down only 3.6 per cent.

Ms Purkiss acknowledged that Hurricane Melissa, which struck last October as the strongest storm ever recorded to hit Jamaica and removed roughly thirty per cent of the island's tourism room stock, remains the principal cause of the downturn.

But the hurricane, she said, does not explain why European arrivals fell by seven per cent while American arrivals fell by twenty-eight, nor why competing destinations that lost the same Spirit services have continued to grow.

She is calling on the Minister to report to Parliament on the state of airlift negotiations, to say what approaches have been made to carriers to restore competitive capacity on the Florida routes before the winter season, and to set out what relief exists for Jamaicans and returning residents facing emergency travel at present fare levels.

The Ministry of Tourism had not responded publicly to the August fare increases at the time of writing.

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