Focusing on Brazil, Russia, India and China is Smart

I must commend the move to forge closer relationships with China in terms of tourism opportunity. We should not leave out the other BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia and India - as so named by Goldman Sachs in 2001. Brazil is known to be a large Reggae market and Jamaica obviously stands to benefit tremendously by tapping into that heritage and providing appropriate attractions.

For those who doubt the soundness of targeting these countries, Goldman Sachs recently released a report these 4 countries will contribute almost half of all global growth in 2008 and 2009. There is no doubt that the middle-class in these countries and growing, people are getting wealthier and their disposable income will undoubtedly partly be used for vacations to new parts of the World.

Jamaica has one of the strongest brands in the World and I do not doubt that we will stand out in the minds of the Chinese when we take to the track at the coming Summer Olympics in Beijing. Stereotypes about Chinese and Indians have no place in the globalized World of today. Jamaica must think like a luxury goods maker - go where the money is. Moscow boasts one of the highest concentrations of Billionaires of any capital city in the World according to Fortune magazine and India had 53 Billionaires on the most recent Forbes list of the World's billionaires.

Do we dare NOT make a real attempt to raise the profile of Jamaica as a quality destination in the BRIC countries? We should be confident enough about our country and our tourism product to reach out to anyone. More importantly, with the expected opening of Cuba, we need to move quickly to diversify our customer base like any well-thinking business. I hope that more Jamaicans will do research on the BRIC countries before writing them off based on outdated stereotypes.