ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, May 15, CMC – Jamaica will host the second annual Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) Air Connectivity Summit next year, building on the success of this year’s inaugural event in Bermuda.
Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, said the February 23, 2027 event will seek to advance regional air travel amid ongoing global challenges.
“The summit will provide strategic insight for regional planning,” Minister Bartlett said. “Jamaica will use that as a means not only of bringing airline partners together, but also to engage in some cerebration … some thinking around the future of air connectivity in our region, which is so important,” said Bartlett, who attended the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s (CHTA) Caribbean Travel Marketplace that ended here on Thursday.
He said that the event will coincide with heightened focus on resilience, coming just one week after the United Nations-designated Global Tourism Resilience Day on February 17 — an initiative Jamaica championed.
The summit follows the first CTO Air Connectivity Summit held in February this year in Bermudaand was attended by various stakeholders including government ministers, directors of tourism, airline executives, airport leaders and industry stakeholders.
Chair of the CTO Airlift Committee and director of tourism for the Cayman Islands, Rosa Harris, has described air connectivity as “our oxygen” and “an economic lifeline” for the region.
“If we can’t get off the island, we can’t develop business, we can’t feed our people,” Harris said, highlighting two major milestones achieved: delivery of the CTO Airlift Study by ASM and the successful hosting of the inaugural summit.
Harris said the study showed steady traffic growth alongside capacity gaps in Europe and key South American markets, specifically Italy, Argentina, Chile and Brazil with strong potential for new direct services.
Destinations were encouraged to build credible business cases for airlines, de-risk new routes through collaborative marketing, optimize existing infrastructure before expanding, and reduce reliance on high taxes and airport fees that hinder intra-Caribbean travel.
“Hosting the 2027 summit in Jamaica will allow us to translate the insights from Bermuda into concrete actions — forging new partnerships, addressing persistent challenges in airlift and strengthening the One Caribbean vision for resilient, connected growth,” said CTO secretary-general and chief executive officer, Dona Regis-Prosper.
She said she would be visiting Jamaica soon to meet with Director of Tourism, Donovan White, to advance plans for the event which will focus on building credible business cases for airlines, optimizing infrastructure, expanding interline agreements and diversifying source markets.
Meanwhile, it has been announced that St. Lucia will host the inaugural CTO Latin American Market Summit on May 5-6, 2027, with a strong focus on improving air connectivity to that fast-growing market.
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