Jamaica is looking toward the potential tourism market in South American destinations and plans to open air routes to facilitate direct connections with the main tourist-sending countries in the area.

As of November we will have airline connections with Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, the largest number of flights between Jamaica and South America in the history of the country, Jamaican Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett announced in a press conference.

“For the first time we will be linked to the whole region,” he said.

According to Bartlett, the start of flights in the winter season of the northern hemisphere will imply the arrival of larger numbers of people fleeing summer in the South.

The last high season Jamaica received more than two million visitors, over nine percent above figures registered in the same period of the previous year.

Tourism is a main sector in the country’s economy. In 2010, it contributed over 766 million USD.