Jamaica is an iconic beach destination – but there’s so much more to the island than flop-and-drop tourism. With a vision of spreading tourism outside of key hotspots and ensuring that Jamaicans felt connected to their tourism industry, four key partners came together to develop a strategy that would strengthen community-based tourism across Jamaica and empower small tourism businesses. Larisa McBean, Tourism Specialist at the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, took us behind-the-scenes of this award-winning campaign – including how they structured the partnership to ensure success, what they learned throughout the process, and how it’s providing a foundation for recovery after Hurricane Melissa.

Community-based tourism is very much at the heart of your award-winning strategy. What does that mean for Jamaica?

For Jamaica, community-based tourism (CBT) is about who benefits from the industry as much as how many visitors we attract. Tourism already contributes roughly a third of Jamaica’s GDP and supports over 300,000 jobs, yet too many communities – especially rural ones –have remained on the margins of that success. CBT is one of the most powerful tools we have to change that.

At a policy level, CBT aligns directly with the Government of Jamaica’s National Community Tourism Policy and Strategy, which frames community tourism as a driver of poverty reduction, gender empowerment, environmental stewardship, and cultural preservation. More recently, the Ministry of Tourism’s “Local First” approach has reinforced the principle that every tourism investment should translate into jobs, contracts, and opportunities for Jamaicans.

At a community level, CBT means that when a visitor books a hike in the Blue Mountains, a river-tubing adventure, a cooking class, a surfing class, or a homestay, the value chain remains as local as possible – tour guides, small farmers, craft producers, transport operators, women, and youth all share in the benefits. Under JSIF’s REDI II (Second Rural Economic Development Initiative) project, CBT is explicitly coupled with climate-resilient investments, so that communities not only earn from tourism but are also better able to manage environmental risks, leading to more sustainable outcomes.

So, for Jamaica, community-based tourism is about making tourism more inclusive, resilient, and authentically Jamaican – ensuring that visitors don’t just come to Jamaica but truly experience Jamaican communities.

Can you summarise the ‘Yaad Luv’ campaign for our audience – what does it mean, and how did you land on this as the calling card for your strategy?

The creative team at Trove Tourism Development Advisors pitched several campaign taglines to our project steering committee that incorporated our Jamaican Patois, and we settled on ‘Yaad Luv: True Jamaican experiences.’ It speaks to the pride and affection we have for the places and people that shaped us. So “Yaad Luv” is both an invitation and a movement: Jamaicans supporting Jamaicans, and visitors choosing experiences that put local communities at the centre.

The campaign was born from a simple insight: Jamaica is one of the world’s best-known tourism brands, but our community-based tourism enterprises don’t always enjoy the same visibility or market access. It also aligns well with the REDI II project development objective to “enhance access to markets and climate-resilient approaches for targeted beneficiaries.” We needed a unifying banner under which a farmer in St. Elizabeth, a Maroon Captain in Charles Town, and a river-rafting tour operator in Portland could all stand together – and be easily discovered by both Jamaicans and international visitors.

Working with Trove Tourism Development Advisors and our national tourism partners, we co-created “Yaad Luv” with communities. The campaign combines vibrant social media storytelling, radio, newspaper, and bus wrap advertising; hands-on training in social media and digital marketing; and the creation and SEO-optimisation of the dedicated platform YaadLuv.com, where visitors can explore and book community-based tourism experiences island-wide.

Since its launch, Yaad Luv has generated over 12 million impressions, more than 500,000 engagements, and over 10,000 leads to CBT enterprises across the island, with 105 enterprises now listed on the platform. For me, that’s the real meaning of the campaign: turning national pride into tangible demand for local community experiences.

The strategy was delivered by four key partners – the Ministry for Tourism, the Jamaica Tourist Board, the Tourism Product Development Company, and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund. How did you ensure that the collaboration between the organisations ran smoothly?

From the outset, we treated Yaad Luv as one national initiative, not four separate programmes. Each partner brought a clear, complementary role:

• Ministry of Tourism (MOT) provided overall policy direction to ensure alignment with the National Community Tourism Policy, so that Yaad Luv reinforced broader goals like “tourism for all Jamaicans” and reviewed the consultant’s deliverables.
• Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) ensured the Yaad Luv messaging provided complementarity to Visit Jamaica’s destination marketing goals and positioned CBT alongside our traditional “sun, sand, and sea” offering, and reviewed the consultant’s deliverables.
• Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) focused on identifying CBT enterprise beneficiaries outside of the JSIF-REDI II project beneficiaries, helping to choose CBTEs to benefit from social media content and website development, introducing the Trove team to these enterprises, and reviewing and approving the consultant’s deliverables.
• Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), through, REDI II, coordinated project design and implementation, including contract management with Trove, running social media ads through our Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and YouTube channels, reviewing and approving comments and responses on social media ad posts throughout the campaign, helping to choose CBTEs to benefit from social media content and website development, and reviewing, approving, and certifying the consultant’s deliverables and incorporating the campaign metrics into the overall results matrix of the REDI II project.

To keep collaboration smooth, we put three things in place:

1. A joint steering committee – an inter-agency meeting to establish the steering committee and regular meetings in collaboration with Trove’s consultancy team, with agreed KPIs (such as number of enterprises onboarded, geographic spread, and digital performance) so that everyone was working off the same dashboard, not separate scorecards.
2. Defined roles through a Chair and Co-Chair – JSIF’s Tourism Specialist chaired the steering committee, with TPDCo’s Community Tourism Manager being the Co-Chair. The Chair oversaw overall project and contract management, chaired meetings, set deadlines for reviewing consultant submissions, and leveraged relationships with CBT enterprises to resolve issues.
3. Clear communication channels with communities – JSIF, TPDCo, and local tourism stakeholders engaged directly with CBT enterprises, while MOT and JTB amplified those stories nationally and internationally. Communities saw a single, coherent initiative rather than multiple, confusing programmes.

In short, we ensured the partnership worked by agreeing early on what success looked like, who did what best, and how we would share both the work and the recognition.

Are you measuring how local residents feel about ‘Yaad Luv?’ If so, what metrics are you using to identify shifts in perceptions, and how are you tracking these?

Yes, absolutely. Because Yaad Luv is by Jamaicans, for Jamaicans, it was essential that we track not just visitor metrics but also how communities themselves feel about the campaign and about tourism more broadly.

We’ve taken a mixed-method approach:

• Perception surveys in selected communities to measure:
  • Awareness of the Yaad Luv brand
  • Pride in local culture and tourism assets
  • Perceived economic and social benefits from tourism
  • Willingness to host visitors or encourage family and friends to visit local CBT enterprises
• Training and capacity-building surveys, where we capture participants’ confidence in using digital tools, their sense of agency in telling their own stories, and their assessment of the campaign’s relevance. JSIF ensured that pre- and post-surveys were conducted to establish a baseline and measure changes resulting from the campaign.
• Digital sentiment and engagement, including:
  • Engagement rates on Yaad Luv content from Jamaican IP addresses and diaspora-heavy markets
  • The tone of comments and shares – are people expressing pride, curiosity, or concern?
  • Leads generated for enterprises by parish and by type of experience, which allows us to see where communities are gaining traction. Since launch, the campaign has generated over 500,000 engagements and 10,000 leads for CBT businesses, a strong signal of interest and connection.
• Enterprise-level feedback, where CBT operators report back on changes in bookings, visitor profiles, and local attitudes – whether more community members are seeking jobs, starting complementary enterprises, or participating in cultural offerings.

Over time, we’re building a baseline and tracking trends, not just one-off numbers. The goal is that residents increasingly see tourism as “our business”, not something that only happens in an all-inclusive resort.

How did you support micro and small businesses within Jamaica to ensure that they benefited from Jamaica’s tourism industry?

Our starting point was that visibility alone is not enough; community enterprises also need capacity, connectivity, and capital.

Through REDI II – a US$40 million project managed and implemented by JSIF and financed through a loan agreement between the Government of Jamaica and the World Bank – we provide grants and technical assistance for climate-resilient agricultural and community tourism investments, with a strong focus on micro- and small-enterprises. This includes upgrading basic infrastructure, improving safety and service standards through training, and helping businesses meet regulatory requirements.

The Yaad Luv campaign then layered market access and skills on top of that foundation:

• Digital and marketing capacity – Trove and our local partners delivered training in social media strategy, content creation, storytelling, and basic analytics so small operators could confidently market themselves and respond to online inquiries.
• Online presence and discoverability – we created YaadLuv.com as a central hub where visitors can find vetted CBT experiences, with search engine optimisation to increase global visibility. Over 100 enterprises are now listed, connecting them directly to both local and overseas visitors.
• Linkages with other sectors and events – REDI II has been a major sponsor of initiatives like the Jamaica Agri-Business Investment Forum, helping to connect small tourism operators with farmers, agro-processors, and investors, and deepening the agriculture–tourism value chain.

By combining grants, capacity building, and demand generation, we’ve moved beyond viewing community tourism as a niche to positioning micro- and small-community enterprises as an integral part of Jamaica’s tourism product.

If you could re-do the strategy from scratch, is there anything you would do differently this time around?

If I were starting again, I would keep the core of the strategy—the community-first approach and the Yaad Luv positioning—but I would refine three areas.

First, I would start the product-readiness work in a few locations earlier, before launching the national campaign. Some enterprises needed more time to strengthen operations, customer service, and digital readiness to fully capitalise on the demand generated by Yaad Luv. A phased rollout – piloting in a handful of communities, then scaling – could have accelerated learning and reduced growing pains. Post-Hurricane Melissa, this would be even more important.

Second, I would invest even more in data and booking infrastructure from day one. While YaadLuv.com is a powerful discovery platform, embedding a more sophisticated, integrated booking and CRM system early on would have given us richer data on conversion, repeat visitation, and visitor satisfaction, and would have made it even easier for small operators to manage enquiries and payments.

Third, I would deepen two audiences: youth and diaspora. We saw strong organic interest from young Jamaicans and from Jamaicans abroad looking to reconnect with “yaad” through authentic experiences. Building dedicated youth content, mentorship opportunities, and targeted diaspora campaigns – along with more multilingual and accessibility-focused content – would amplify both the economic and social impact.

Through this City Nation Place Award for Best Communication Strategy: Tourism, Jamaica’s communities were recognised on the global stage, for which I am super proud. However, this award belongs first and foremost to the communities who chose to show their Yaad Luv to the world.

Wonderfully said, Larisa. And thank you for being so generous with your time and insight.

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