Air BNB, Jamaica partnership reaping success

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says the online tourism marketing portal Airbnb has attracted in excess of 30,000 visitors to Jamaica since a partnership was signed two months ago.

Airbnb facilitates the listing of bed and breakfast-type accommodations and promotes such accommodations to tourists who are not attracted to large or all-inclusive type resorts.

Speaking late last week during a tour of the culturally rich Trench Town in Kingston, Bartlett revealed that the country received about 32,000 visitors since signing a memorandum of understanding with the California-based company.

He says the partnership has diversified the accommodation sector and also the kind of entrepreneurship operating within the sector.

He says the pool of accommodations registered with Airbnb have surpassed some major hotel chains in terms of the number of beds offered.

Bartlett says the majority of the 1,200 accommodations in Jamaica registered under Airbnb are from Trench Town and other inner-city communities.

Other locations include Portmore, St Catherine and the north coast.