Community Tourism in Jamaica

Our creative studio + production house partnered with Solimar International to produce a series of video assets promoting community tourism initiatives in Jamaica, which combined our agency's passion for sustainability, community tourism, and conservation.

Our Client

Solimar International is a specialist consulting and marketing firm focused on developing tourism destinations with sustainability at the heart of their global projects. They have worked on over 200 programs in 500 international destinations as a specialized destination marketing agency. Our collaboration with Solimar International is based on a shared vision of the importance of sustainable tourism and the conservation of natural resources and cultural heritage. We have also partnered with Solimar on community tourism projects in Colombia.

The Project

Solimar International approached our storytelling agency to work on their Jamaica Community Experiences project. Alongside partners, including the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), the Government of Jamaica, the Jamaica Tourism Board (JTB), and the Jamaica Product Development Company (JPDco), the project's goal was to provide marketing and promotional services for rural community tourism enterprises.

The challenge facing community tourism in Jamaica is that most tourism on the island is offered through private companies and resorts, which sell all-inclusive packages to private beach clubs and hotels. Tourists land in Jamaica and are whisked away to their resort, which they never leave for the duration of their stay. This form of tourism offers no direct benefits to local communities. This project sought to promote the unique experiences you can only have in Jamaica through community tourism experiences.

The ultimate aim was to develop a fresh brand identity for Jamaican tourism centered around the island's many unique community tourism experiences. Beneficiaries of this program included farmers, fishermen, and craftspeople, who have organized themselves to carry out tourism activities across the island.

The Deliverables

Solimar hired our storytelling agency to produce the digital marketing campaign for the community tourism products they were promoting. This brief included producing, filming, and post-producing a series of promotional videos for these community tourism enterprises and providing high-quality digital images.

One of the principal community tourism initiatives was a music group.

In The Field

In Jamaica, we filmed in the field with local people involved in various community tourism initiatives, including wildlife and ecotourism, cultural experiences, and adventure tourism.

We experienced this Caribbean island's beautiful landscapes, people, and culture and fell in love with the community tourism experiences we were there to promote. It's always a good sign for a project when the work captures your imagination in how this Jamaica project did. The people we worked with were welcoming, kind, and deeply passionate about sharing their culture and way of life with international visitors. That passion comes across in the final videos.

The Videos

We produced four final videos for Solimar International - an introductory video to Jamaica ('Discover Amazing Experiences in the Home of Alright') and three videos exploring Jamaican community tourism's three pillars: adventure, culture, and nature.

Each video showcases a different aspect of this multifaceted island, including the mouthwatering food (try listening to the locals listing their various delicacies in the Culture video and not drooling, we dare you!), music, wildlife, crystal-clear Caribbean waters, and tropical forests. The four videos also featured a total of eight JSIF-supported community tourism enterprises.

We avoided narration during the edit, as we wanted the community tourism operators to speak for themselves since the project's goal is to bring their voices and projects to the foreground. Their words provide the narrative of each video, backed up by the ambient sounds of the sea and the forest and the propulsive rhythms of drums. We wanted to showcase the sights and sounds of the real Jamaica as much as possible, away from the often sterile world of the all-inclusive resort hotels. After all, what is travel if not the chance to share with new people and immerse yourself in new cultures?

The Results

By developing effective communication tools in the form of videos and promotional images, the eight community tourism enterprises featured were able to easily and immediately communicate with their target markets, as well as potential stakeholders and sources of funding.

This project also led to the creation of the Jamaica Community Experiences Brand in 2016, and helped to create a broader awareness of community tourism experiences in Jamaica and change people’s perspective about Jamaica tourism overall.

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