JAPEX Returns to Ocho Rios as Jamaica Reaches for 500,000 Canadian Visitor Goal
by Bruce Parkinson
Canadian advisors at JAPEX led by JTB Director Canada Angella Bennett at centre.
Jamaica’s premier tourism marketplace recently returned to Ocho Rios for the first time in more than a decade, bringing international buyers face-to-face with the popular destination’s hoteliers, attraction operators and other tourism suppliers.
Moon Palace Jamaica hosted the 36th Jamaica Product Exchange (JAPEX). Organized by the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) in partnership with the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), it connected local and international suppliers with tour operators, travel advisors, airlines and other partners from the island’s largest source markets.
Canada is one off those markets. Just under 400,000 Canadians travelled there in 2025, and the figure would have been higher without the unwelcome late November visit from Hurricane Melissa, which took out thousands of hotel rooms just before the winter 2025-2026 season.
Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Hon. Edmund Bartlett has been vocal about a goal of receiving at least 500,000 Canadians per year. After the bump in the road last year, things are definitely heading in that direction.
“We will have closer to 400,000 seats from Canada to Jamaica this winter from November to April,” JTB’s Canadian Director Angella Bennett told Travel Market Report Canada. That’s 34% more than was flown last winter after the disruption of Hurricane Melissa its impact on hotels and flights.
Bennett shared that Porter’s entry to Jamaica will add approximately 20,000 new seats this winter, with 5x weekly flights from Toronto, 2x from Ottawa, 2x London, 2x from Hamilton.
Air Canada is adding another 20,000 or so seats with new gateways Edmonton, Winnipeg and Halifax, and up to 10 weekly flights from Toronto. Sunwing/WestJet is adding a direct flight from London, Ontario to Montego Bay.
The return of JAPEX to Ocho Rios for the first time since 2012 gave buyers and media an opportunity to see how one of Jamaica’s major resort destinations has evolved.
Tourism Minister Bartlett told delegates that the conference location took on additional significance following Melissa, which struck western and southern Jamaica last October.
Approximately 80% of the island’s hotels have now reopened, Bartlett said, with the remaining properties expected to resume operations during the first quarter of 2027.
“Even amid global uncertainty, shifting travel patterns and the challenges nature has placed before us, Jamaica’s tourism sector continues to do what it has always done, which is adapt, innovate and grow,” Bartlett told the JAPEX audience.
