A few years ago my wife and I vacationed in Jamaica for a week.
This gave us the time to really meet the local people. We even took a bicycle tour down from the top of the Blue Mountain. It was a great all day tour and went through many little towns.
It was one of the best experiences of the week. We even stopped at a school yard where the school kid came out to sing folk songs for us.
We found the people outside of the tourist areas to be genuinely friendly and caring people
Try to not judge all Jamaica by the sales people in the tourist towns. Would you like the United States to be judged only by the strip in Las Vegas?