Hurricane Melissa Cripples Jamaica’s Tourism and Highlights Climate Risk
Photo Credit: An image shows the interior of the Iberostar Rose Hall Suites in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa. Lindsay Hooky
Skift Take
As climate change fuels ever-stronger hurricanes, Jamaica’s battered tourism industry faces an urgent reckoning and so do the companies invested in its future.
Hurricane Melissa tore across Jamaica this week, shredding roofs, flooding resorts, and shuttering airports in a country where tourism is the economic backbone.
Now, as officials begin to tally the damage, the storm is already being seen as a warning of how climate change is reshaping the Caribbean’s most vital industry.
Melissa, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the region, made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, battering Jamaica’s north coast with sustained winds of 185 miles per hour.
Entire resorts were inundated, thousands of tourists were stranded, and nearly all airports and ports were forced to close.
“Tourism has been impacted negatively,” said Dennis Zulu, the United Nations’ resident coordinator in Jamaica during a press conference. “We’re obviously going to see reduced arrivals, because the resorts a
