Hon. Edmund Bartlett In Washington, DC for Four-Day Programme

WASHINGTON, D.C.   – Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Hon. Edmund Bartlett arrives in Washington on April 7 for an intensive four-day programme that positions the island front and center in the American capital’s diplomatic, academic, and tourism trade corridors.

The visit — anchored in Jamaica’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Melissa and the imperative to sustain momentum in the island’s largest source market — spans a book launch at the Organisation of American States, receptions hosted by the Jamaica Tourist Board and the Embassy of Jamaica, the inaugural Don Hawkins Distinguished Lecture at George Washington University, and executive meetings with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Four-Day Schedule

• April 7 — JTB Travel Advisors Reception: Jamaica’s Top Sellers, Front and Center

The Minister’s programme opens on April 7 with a Jamaica Tourist Board reception hosting more than 90 travel advisors and trade partners — among them 50 of Jamaica’s highest-performing sellers in the Northeast United States market. The function is a deliberate first move: before the academic honours and diplomatic ceremony of the days ahead, Minister Bartlett will stand directly before individuals whose daily work converts American consumer interest into confirmed arrivals on Jamaican soil.

Ricardo Henry, Business Development Officer for the Northeast USA, framed the purpose squarely. “The aim is to reconnect with and re-energize our most important link between Jamaica and the visitors to the island,” said Henry, “particularly at this time as we fully recover from the ravages of Hurricane Melissa.”

With the Northeast corridor consistently producing Jamaica’s largest volume of stopover arrivals, the reception gives the island’s top commercial allies direct ministerial assurance that Jamaica is open, recovering, and ready.

• April 8th 3:00pm — Book Launch at OAS Headquarters

At 3:00 p.m. on April 8, Minister Bartlett will launch Destination Reputational Resilience: Tourism Crisis Preparedness, Response & Recovery in an Age of Digital Disruption — a major new publication co-authored with Professor Lloyd Waller, Executive Director of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC).

The launch takes place at OAS Headquarters, 17th Street & Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., before an audience drawn from the diplomatic corps and senior regional officials.

Remarks will be delivered by the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States Ambassador Albert  Ramdin ,Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United states    Major General (Ret’d) Antony Anderson,

The work directly addresses the challenges that have defined Bartlett’s tenure — misinformation, cyber threats, fake news, and the digital disruption of destination reputation — offering frameworks for crisis preparedness and recovery that are immediately applicable to the post-Melissa moment Jamaica is navigating right now.

“Destination Reputational Resilience is not a theoretical exercise — it is a field manual drawn from the frontlines of tourism crisis management. Jamaica’s experience through Hurricane Melissa makes the timing of this launch not merely appropriate, but urgent.”

• April 8th 6:00 p.m. — JTB Diaspora Reception at The Embassy of Jamaica

On the evening of April 8, the Jamaica Tourist Board will host a diaspora reception at the Embassy of Jamaica, commencing at 6:00 p.m.

The function will be addressed by Minister Bartlett who will update members of the Jamaica diaspora community in the District of Columbia  Virgina Maryland (DMV) on tourism industry ongoing recovery from Hurricane Melissa.  Ambassador Anderson will also bring remarks.

• April 9th — Inaugural Don Hawkins Distinguished Lecture at GWU & JTB Trade Reception

April 9 opens at the George Washington University School of Business, where Minister Bartlett will deliver the inaugural Don Hawkins Distinguished Lecture at 6:00 p.m. honouring the legacy of Professor Donald E. Hawkins, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Tourism Policy, who passed away on December 31, 2025, at the age of 89.

Hawkins co-founded GWU’s Master of Tourism Administration programme, established the International Institute of Tourism Studies, earned the UN World Tourism Organization’s Ulysses Prize in 2003, and left an institutional imprint on Jamaica’s tourism education through his foundational role in creating the Jamaica Centre of Tourism Innovation (JCTI).

The evening at Duquès Hall, will also feature remarks from GWSB Dean Dr. Sevin Yeltekin and the 2026 MSTHEM Alumni Awards.

The day also features a second JTB trade reception — “An Evening with the Honourable Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett” — hosting approximately 100 travel advisors and trade partners for a strategic briefing on Jamaica’s recovery trajectory and the current state of the tourism product.

• World Bank & IDB: High-Level Bilateral Meetings

Across the course of the visit, Minister Bartlett will hold executive-level meetings with leadership at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank — engagements that speak to Jamaica’s positioning of its tourism recovery not merely as a sectoral concern, but as a macro-economic and development finance priority.

The meetings reflect the longstanding understanding, advanced by scholars like Professor Hawkins, that tourism is a vehicle for sustainable development and resilience requiring the full support of multilateral institutions to achieve its potential in small island developing states.