KINGSTON, Jamaica — A simmering political row over Jamaica’s cruise shipping performance has erupted this week, as a first-term opposition parliamentarian has publicly called out the country’s top tourism official for failing to reverse a steep, years-long decline in cruise passenger volumes even as the global industry booms post-pandemic.
Andrea Purkiss, the opposition’s spokesperson on tourism and linkages and Member of Parliament for Hanover Eastern, delivered the sharp critique during her maiden speech to the House of Representatives during the ongoing Sectoral Debate on Tuesday. Purkiss accuses Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett of staying “completely silent” on the sector’s struggles, which have seen Jamaica’s cruise passenger numbers drop by more than 28% since 2019, ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Purkiss pushed back against Bartlett’s previous claims that the local cruise sector has “lived up to expectations,” arguing that the only expectation the minister has met is that no one would verify his inaccurate public statements. She laid out detailed statistics to back up her critique: in 2019, Jamaica hosted 1,544,233 cruise passengers. By the end of 2025, that number fell to just 1,106,361, marking a 28.4% seven-year decline that equals a loss of nearly 438,000 potential visitors annually.
These missing visitors do not just translate to lower port activity, Purkiss explained. They represent lost income across Jamaica’s entire tourism ecosystem, from local taxi drivers and craft vendors to owners of tourist attractions across the island. The opposition spokesperson calculated that the Jamaican government’s failure to recapture lost cruise market share has cost the sector more than 3 million missed passenger visits, amounting to an estimated $30 million U.S. dollars (equal to 4.5 billion Jamaican dollars) in lost economic activity, based on a conservative estimate of $10 U.S. in spending per cruise passenger.
Purkiss emphasized that her critique is not an unfair political attack, noting that the global cruise industry has already fully rebounded from the pandemic — and is in fact seeing record growth. Global cruise passenger volume has surged to an all-time high of 37.2 million, a 25.2% jump compared to 2019 pre-pandemic levels. The Caribbean region is leading this expansion, capturing 44% of all global cruise traffic, and many of Jamaica’s regional neighbors have capitalized on the boom to grow their own cruise sectors, Purkiss pointed out.
She cited concrete examples of regional success to contrast with Jamaica’s performance: Antigua and Barbuda has grown its cruise sector by 9.9% after opening a new purpose-built terminal; Barbados is reporting all-time record cruise visitor numbers; Mexico’s Cozumel now welcomes 4.73 million cruise passengers annually; and the Bahamas has seen its cruise traffic double since 2019.
The exchange highlights growing political friction over Jamaica’s tourism strategy, a core driver of the country’s national economy, as the opposition pushes the government to address why the nation has failed to capitalize on a global cruise boom that has benefited its closest competitors.