There are about 3,000,000 Jamaicans on the island. If every single penny of what those 2 million visitors spend went directly to the people that would be a whopping us$667 per Jamaican per year. And that is if it was given directly to the people and not one dollar spent at the hotel, bars, restaurants or stores. And please note that out of the 2 million visitors to Jamaica last year, about 500,000 came to Negril.
Getting back to economic facts, there is this thing called "cost of goods sold" and "cost of services provided" that have to be taken into account. First, you land at the airport and there are certain maintenance and upgrade costs associated with that operation which comes out of that us$1000 that each visitor spends and are not part of the fees paid on the airline ticket itself.
Then you arrive in Negril using the highway which also has maintenance and upgrade costs that must come out of that same us$1000 per person.
Then you have the hotel which has staff, electricity, water, phone and other operating, maintenance and upgrade costs directly associated with its remaining open that comes out of that same us$1000.
Bars and restaurants have employee and inventory costs as well as maintenance and upgrades associated with their operation, and that must be covered by that same us$1000 per person.
As you can see, at this point that us$1000 is being spread pretty thin and the way the government collects its money is by this thing called "taxes". The GCT you pay is one of those taxes, as well as the us$1 per night per room tax that was added last year.
So out of that us$1000 per person from those 2 million visitors, the government GCT collects about 333 million or about us$110 per year per Jamaican resident. There are other business and employee taxes, which vary on the kind of business and the amount they earn in profit. There is also the TEF taxes so lets estimate on the high side and take that to 1.5 billion us dollars or us$500 per Jamaican resident per year.
Out of us$500 per person comes the airport and road work already mentioned - along with all the other infrastructure necessary to make a country operate. And this includes every square inch of Jamaica, not just the tourist areas. There are hospitals, schools, government offices, government workers, medical services including the universal health care, etc that all need to be paid out of that us$500 per Jamaican resident.
Two years ago a new state of the art ambulance along with trained EMTs were made available in Negril. That came out of that money that the government made in taxes. And last year the sidewalk project was started in Negril to make the walking safer. That has also come out of the taxes that the government has collected.
So last year the Jamaican government earned approximately us$500 per resident and had to pay out for all the costs mentioned above. How much do you think is left over per person, if any, once all those expenses have been covered?
Tourism makes up about 5% of Jamaica's GDP (gross domestic product) with the service industry making up 60% according to the Index Mundi 2013 Economic Profile:
http://www.indexmundi.com/jamaica/economy_profile.html
