RIYADH: Saudi Arabia and Jamaica will be signing an MoU to collaborate on building tourism as the world recovers from the pandemic, Jamaican Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett told Arab News on the sidelines of the FII Summit in Riyadh. Jamaica is a very highly tourism dependent country with a direct tourism impact of 10 percent on GDP and an indirect impact of about 34 percent, Bartlett said. He attributed this to the country being part of the Caribbean, which is regarded as the most tourism dependent region on earth, where some countries have tourism dependence of up to 95 percent of GDP. Jamaica has 170,000 people out of its working population of 1.2 million employed directly in tourism, he said. “Tourism represents just about 20 percent of the total employment,” he said. “The foreign exchange it generates for Jamaica is about $3.7 billion before COVID-19, which means it is a little over 54 percent of all the foreign exchange that Jamaica earns,” he added. Barlett pointed out that tourism in the country is based primarily on the people. “The iconic attraction for all the visitors is the people. The result of course is that, we have perhaps the highest level of repeat business in the industry, 42 percent,” he said. One in two of everybody who you see on the beach in Jamaica has been there at least once, he said. Barlett also highlighted the importance of air connectivity for tourism. “Tourism cannot function without air connectivity. As they say, you don’t swim to Jamaica, you fly,” he said.