Palm fronds framing a calm Caribbean harbour with small craft at anchor.

The Sustainable Destination Review

Not By Arrivals Alone

Jamaica’s tourism future rests on stronger coastlines, tighter energy and water discipline, cleaner resort towns, and communities that share in the return. Inside: what changed, why it matters to your operation, and what to act on before the next edition.

Volume One Inaugural Edition August 2026 Kingston, Jamaica

Lead Perspective

Sustainability Is Not an Add-On. It Is Tourism Management.

Jamaica’s tourism future will not be secured by arrivals alone. It will be secured by stronger coastlines, smarter energy and water use, cleaner resort towns, better community relationships, and a tourism product that creates long term value for Jamaica as well as for the visitor.

That is why this publication exists. The Sustainable Destination Review is here to help JHTA members track the issues reshaping the sector, and to point to the practical steps that make a business, and a destination, more resilient, more competitive and more credible.

Read plainly, this is the same discipline members already apply to cost control, guest experience and risk, extended to the resources and the coastline the business actually runs on. Water that does not arrive is a rooms problem. A shoreline that retreats is a capital problem. A resort town that looks tired is a rate problem. None of that sits in a separate column marked environment.

The committee’s working assumption is that most members are already doing more than they get credit for, and that the gap is rarely commitment. It is documentation, sequencing and knowing which move returns the most for the least disruption. That is the gap these pages are built to close.

Every edition will do three things. Tell you what has changed. Tell you why it matters to your operation. Tell you what you can act on before the next edition lands.

The Product, Energy & Sustainability Committee

Our Mandate

Twelve Priorities,
One Objective

The committee has set a wide but coherent field of work for this administrative year and beyond. Each priority will be covered in these pages as it moves, and always against the same test: what can a member do about it on Monday morning?

Resources and Operations

Energy efficiency and renewables
Water conservation and wastewater management
Circular economy and waste reduction
Compliance
Sustainability reporting

Coast and Nature

Climate resilience and business continuity
Coral reef, mangrove and biodiversity protection
Blue economy and sustainable seafood

Place and People

Resort town cleanliness
Destination stewardship
Community engagement
Sustainable and regenerative experiences

Team

Co-Chairs: Vana Taylor & Kyle Mais
Sustainability Leads: Shernette Crichton & Aldain Reid
Members: Kirstin McCarthy, Houston Moncure, Jason Henzell, William Vassell, Rafael Matas, Karen Lanigan, and one Allied Member drawn from each JHTA Chapter

Jamaica Watch

What Moved
This Quarter

Policy

Tourism 3.0 puts resilience inside the definition of competitiveness

The Ministry of Tourism’s Tourism 3.0 framework explicitly links the sector’s future competitiveness to resilience, innovation, seamless visitor experiences, strong governance and sustainable value creation.

For MembersNational tourism policy is now written in the same vocabulary used by tour operators, lenders and insurers when they assess a property. Members who can evidence resilience and governance, rather than describe them, will find the framework easier to align with as it is operationalised.

On The Ground

Community tourism enterprises get continuity support

The National Community-based Tourism Resilience Symposium, held in St. James on 16 July, brought together more than 170 participants and provided 50 local tourism enterprises with support to strengthen business continuity and climate readiness.

For MembersThe small operators in your supply chain are being equipped. Ask the attractions, tour providers, farmers and craft vendors you work with whether they took part and what they now have in place. Their continuity is part of yours.

Infrastructure

Water and wastewater move up the national agenda

At the recent JHTA forum, the Minister responsible for water, environment and climate change stressed that major investment in water and wastewater infrastructure is critical to protecting Jamaica’s environmental resilience and coastal assets.

For MembersPublic investment will not remove the need for discipline on property. Metering, leak detection and effluent management stay firmly within a member’s own control, and they are usually where the first measurable saving is found.

Aerial view of the Montego Bay shoreline: reef, clear shallows, white sand and hotel stock along the water. — Montego Bay’s coastline holds the whole agenda in one frame: the reef that shelters the beach, the beach that carries the rate, and the room stock that depends on both.

Entry Points

Two Doors
Already Open

Neither of these requires a capital budget or a new policy. Both give a member something concrete to point to.

Open Now

The Tourism Recycling Partnership Initiative

TPDCo and Recycling Partners of Jamaica are promoting a partnership aimed at reducing plastic accumulation and encouraging responsible disposal and recycling within the sector. It is one of the simplest ways for a property to convert an existing waste stream into a documented practice.

Recycling Partners of Jamaica campaign poster reading Just Start: imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. — Recycling Partners of Jamaica

19 September 2026

International Coastal Cleanup Day

The Jamaica Environment Trust leads the national effort, using the day to remove garbage from mangroves and shorelines. Site coordinator registration ran from 6 July and closed on 27 July. Members who did not register a site can still take part through a registered coordinator. JET’s flagship cleanup takes place in the Palisadoes and Port Royal Protected Area. For members, taking part sits naturally alongside the sector-wide push on waste that TPDCo is driving through the recycling partnership.

Prop roots of a red mangrove stand arching into shallow water beneath a dense green canopy.

“
The question is no longer whether mangroves matter. It is whether our operations are accounting for the protection they already give us.
Coastal Resilience Is Tourism Resilience

Feature

Coastal Resilience Is Tourism Resilience

Jamaica’s tourism economy is inseparable from the health of its coastline. Hotels, attractions, restaurants, transport providers, fishing communities and resort towns all depend on coastal systems able to withstand erosion, flooding, storm surge and rising seas. Mangroves are among the country’s most valuable natural defences.

96 HabitatsMangrove habitats identified across Jamaica

13,784 HectaresApproximate area those habitats cover

2062 Target YearNational horizon for forested wetland conservation

These ecosystems stabilise shorelines, reduce wave energy, provide nurseries for fish, support biodiversity and protect nearby communities and infrastructure. Their value is therefore not only ecological. Mangroves protect tourism assets, livelihoods, food systems and the natural character that makes Jamaica competitive as a destination.

The Jamaica Mangroves Plus project supports a long term national objective to conserve at least 60 percent of government owned forested wetlands and 20 percent of privately owned forested wetlands by 2062. For operators, that second figure is the one to note. Privately owned wetland is, in many cases, wetland sitting on or beside a member’s title.

This creates a genuine opportunity: to understand the wetlands surrounding a property, to stop the activities that quietly degrade them, and to back credible conservation work through community and institutional partnerships. The practical question for the industry is no longer whether mangroves matter. It is whether coastal development, property operations and destination planning are fully accounting for the protection they provide.

For Your Property

What To Do
With This

Six moves a member can start this quarter without waiting on a budget cycle, a consultant or a policy change.

Map what is next to you. Identify the wetland, reef and shoreline assets within a kilometre of the property, and find out who manages them. Most operators cannot yet name the agency or community group responsible for the coast they sell.
Follow the water out. Review any drainage, effluent or landscaping practice that discharges toward a wetland or a nearshore reef. This is usually the cheapest correction available and the one most visible to a visiting assessor.
Give shoreline risk an owner. Check that the business continuity plan treats shoreline loss and storm surge as an operational risk with a named person accountable, rather than as a facilities footnote.
Back one thing properly. Choose a single credible conservation or restoration partner and put a measurable commitment behind it, so the claim holds when a tour operator, insurer or certification body asks for evidence.
Write down what you already do. Most properties are further along than their records show, and undocumented good practice earns nothing in a certification review, a tender or a rate negotiation.
Set a resource baseline. Pull twelve months of utility bills and record electricity and water use per occupied room. No efficiency target, retrofit case or savings claim can be made without a starting number.

The Wider View

Where The Industry
Is Moving

A young surfer standing in shallow water with her board, palms behind her. — Regenerative and community rooted experiences are moving from the margins of the product mix toward the centre of how destinations are judged.

A guide paddling visitors through a clear river gorge in a small open boat. — Small guided experiences are the enterprises the national resilience push is equipping, and the ones that keep visitor spend circulating locally.

Across global tourism, sustainability is moving beyond isolated environmental projects and becoming part of destination strategy, investment planning and business resilience.

Regenerative tourism, nature positive development, carbon measurement, community wellbeing and climate adaptation increasingly shape how destinations are evaluated and how hospitality businesses prepare for what is coming.

Recent international work shows the direction of travel. The Mangroves of the Americas Congress has strengthened collaboration among governments, researchers, communities and restoration specialists. UNESCO’s MangRes programme continues to advance science led and community supported restoration across Latin America and the Caribbean. Major hospitality institutions are placing greater emphasis on net positive operations, practical performance measurement, and the relationship between resilient ecosystems and viable tourism businesses.

For Jamaica the implication is straightforward. Environmental stewardship belongs to product quality, operational continuity and destination competitiveness. Protecting mangroves, reefs, watersheds and coastal communities is not separate from tourism development. It is one of the foundations that sustainable tourism development stands on.

Diary

Dates To Know

Four dates that deserve space on a member calendar for the period immediately ahead.

19September

International Coastal Cleanup Day, Jamaica

The Jamaica Environment Trust coordinates the national effort, using the day to remove garbage from mangroves and shorelines. Members can join through a registered site coordinator.

27September

World Tourism Day

The United Nations observance that annually focuses attention on tourism’s wider developmental role. Useful for framing community and supply chain work to a public audience.

02October

National Tree Planting Day

Observed annually by the Forestry Department on the first Friday in October. Straightforward to run on property, on a community site, or with a school in the resort town.

14October

International E-Waste Day

Matters as hotels, attractions and allied businesses modernise equipment and need safer disposal practices. Worth timing an equipment refresh against.

From The Committee

Volume Two
Is Open

This is a members’ publication, and it is only as good as what members send back to it. Volume One is the committee talking. Volume Two should be the membership.

We are looking for the unglamorous, verifiable work: the retrofit that paid back faster than expected, the water saving that survived a full season, the community arrangement that held, the supplier who solved a waste problem. Short is fine. A paragraph and a photograph is enough to start.

Submit To Volume Two: JHTA Secretariat · info@jhta.org