The Jamaica Tourist Board is trying to get the message out in social media that “Jamaica is still open for business” despite the drug-related violence that erupted in the capital, Kingston, on Monday.
The board’s VisitJamaica website notes the government has issued a state of emergency for Kingston and St. Andrew parishes, two areas hours away from the tourist meccas of Negril, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios. The airports remain open, the board says.
The destination marketing organization, using its Twitter handle, VisitJamaicaNow, hasn’t been extremely active on Twitter, with two tweets since the crisis began. The tourist board only has 384 followers as of this writing.
Still, it has tweeted twice about the situation since last night.
Here are the tweets:
I guess the tourist board views its website and Twitter as the best communications mediums about the crisis because it reveals nothing about the situation on its Facebook page.
The same holds true on the board’s YouTube channel, where it is business as usual for Jamaica tourism. Here’s the featured video:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5NcUA3t4Os
Kingston is where the violence occurred and, from a travel standpoint, it is considered to be a business travel destination and not much of a leisure one.
Here’s a more realistic view of the situation on the ground from ITN News a couple of days ago.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGX_moadEE8
Meanwhile, Â TripAdvisor is showing itself to be a useful resource for travelers considering a trip to Jamaica.
TripAdvisor displays a U.S. State Dept. travel advisory about Jamaica, and includes links to governmental authorities, as well as to customer support at sister companies Expedia.com and hotels.com.
And, TripAdvisor is also showing itself to be an equal opportunity resource: It even offers a link to Orbitz customer service.
Then again, in the wacky world of travel, Orbitz is a TripAdvisor advertiser.
When this began to break over the past weekend, I called someone I know in Kingston to find out what was happening and because I was concerned for their safety. They assured me that they were fine and the violence was confined to Tivoli Gardens and Trenchtown. Since then, of course, the outbreaks have happened in some other communities just outside the capital and now with the death toll mounting, this morning’s news indicates that the U.S. is trying to negotiate a voluntary extradition of the drug lord figure at the center of it.
But regarding Kingston itself and the handling of this by the JTB and its public relations, I’m not sure how they can be expected to address a situation that hasn’t definitively gone in one direction or another yet. And it won’t be dragging on long, so they may well have calculated that the less said in the short term – beyond travel advisories and bulletins on what parts of Kingston are under s state of emergency – the better for now. There will be plenty to address later on in fact, since contrary to what was alluded to in your blog, Kingston has made notable efforts in reinventing itself has a business, cultural, and entertainment hub in the western Caribbean. What has happened is tragic, but the scale of the tragedy and how it can be turned around hasn’t emerged and won’t emerge until the gunfire stops.
Hal: In this day and age, there is little preventing a tourist board from at least conducting a dialogue with travelers as events are unfolding. The tourist board can’t expect to have all the answers in a fluid situation, but there’s nothing that should prevent some conversation.
The JTB probably has nothing much to add minute-by-minute, they’re kept apprised more or less the same as the rest of the island — through government announcements in the mass media. They’ve never taken the direction of developing their site in terms of drawing the viewership that will interract consistently and intensely on topic forums, if that’s what you mean. There’s plenty of conversation on bulletin boards and island-centric tweeters and sites beyond the JTB. That’s where many of us covering the region professionally or connected to it personally go for the on-the-ground stuff.
Well I know they were pretty onpoint on Facebook Fan Page, I’m a member. They were answering people’s concerns and showing that all was well in the tourist areas even as things were tense in Kingston. Their facebook fan page facebook.com/jamaica has remained largely supportive and positive from what I’ve been seeing of their posts and people’s response.
Not sure what the JTB could be expected to tweeted minute by minute or even hour by hour while the situation was in high stride. I think now is the time for them as the dust settles to inform and sooth our concerns and show that things were always fine in the resort areas….but question though…JTB’s twitter is solely for promotions and deals though…so again..maybe they took the position to pause on that until they got information so the could them pass on information to their concerned travellers.
Let’s see what they say to us now…