Airports, cruise piers reopen to tourists after Hurricane Beryl

Hurricane Beryl did its best to cripple Jamaica, but the country’s airports and seaports were operational Friday, according to the Tourism Ministry.

In Kingston, Norman Manley International Airport reopened at 5 a.m. Friday. In Montego Bay, Sangster International Airport resumed operations at 6 p.m. Thursday. And in Ocho Rios, Ian Fleming International Airport is now open.

Jamaica’s cruise ports — Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Falmouth — have also reopened to passenger ships.

Beryl made landfall in Tulum, Mexico, early Friday morning as a stronger-than-expected Category 2 hurricane, but that strength quickly faded as it moved across the Yucatan Peninsula.

Forecasters expect Beryl, now a tropical storm, to reemerge over the Gulf of Mexico later Friday, where it has just enough time to strengthen back into a Category 1 hurricane before potentially making its first U.S. landfall of the season over southern Texas.

READ MORE: Beryl dealt Caribbean economies a major blow, UN says. It could take years to recover

Jamaica and the Caribbean are still reeling from the storm, which killed at least seven people in the eastern Caribbean and two in Jamaica and destroyed most homes on some smaller islands. In Jamaica, several homes were left without roofs.

But Jamaican officials said the worst was over and the country could welcome new visitors.

“Jamaica is open for business and once again the resilience of the Jamaican people is on full display,” Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said in a statement. “We are grateful that there has been no large-scale impact on our overall tourism infrastructure and that our tourism industry is fully operational.”

The Tourism Ministry said employees and guests at hotels and resorts across the country were safe during the hurricane. Bartlett said the country’s message to travelers was: “Jamaica is ready to welcome you.”

Before Beryl, Jamaica was having a record year for tourism. Two million people visited the country through May, a record for that period.

“Tourism has obviously been impacted, particularly by the closure of airports,” said Denis Zulu, the UN resident coordinator for Jamaica, but “Jamaica has moved quickly towards opening the airports.”

Zulu made the comments to reporters at a news conference Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York. The Jamaican government is “taking serious steps,” he said, to ensure access to the resorts and the roads leading to them so that workers can return to work.

Flights to and from Miami in the Caribbean

Flights between Miami International Airport and Kingston and Montego Bay resumed Friday, as did flights to Grand Cayman. Some Miami-Nassau flights also resumed.

Travel is “back to normal,” said Greg Chin, communications director for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department.

This is a marked improvement from Thursday, when Miami airport recorded a total of nine cancelled arrivals and seven cancelled departures. The cities affected were Kingston, Montego Bay, Grand Cayman, Nassau and Tulum, Mexico. So far Friday, only two arrivals and two departures have been cancelled to and from Nassau and Tulum.

MIA’s flight tracker showed that for the remainder of Friday, two arrivals from Grand Cayman and one from Grenada were scheduled to arrive on time. One flight from Kingston was delayed.

Other Caribbean islands have been hit harder and may take longer to recover.

“This is going to have a major impact, particularly on the smaller islands of the Grenadines and in northern Grenada,” said Simon Springett, UN resident coordinator in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

“However, “major infrastructure such as airports and ports has not been seriously damaged, and we hope that tourists will not give up on visiting these beautiful islands,” Springett said.

American Airlines announced Friday that it has resumed operations to Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada and St. Vincent. It has also resumed flights to Montego Bay, Kingston and Grand Cayman. The airline also said it is continuing operations to Cancun and Cozumel, but has suspended flights to Tulum and Merida due to airport closures.

Cruise Ship Detours

Large cruise ships have also been affected, forced to change their itineraries.

On Friday, Royal Caribbean said there were no additional changes, but that “this is a fluid situation.”

Carnival made two changes Friday: Carnival Paradise will visit Nassau on Saturday instead of Cozumel, and Carnival Breeze will not visit Progreso, Mexico, as planned on Thursday.

Miami Herald reporter Alex Harris contributed to this report.