The President of the Republic, Luis Abinader and the Minister of Tourism, David Collado, led the opening ceremony of the Caribbean Hotel Investment Conference & Operations Summit (CHICOS) 2022, which is being held in Bayahibe, La Romana.
The CHICOS conference is being held at the Hilton La Romana hotel on Thursday and Friday, bringing together more than 300 investors and hotel operators from around the world, as well as the main tourism authorities of the Caribbean.
This meeting aims to explore the challenges, winning strategies and opportunities in the tourism sector, under the theme “Resilience, creating opportunities from challenges”. The conference seeks to look to the future and create a space for the promotion and attraction of new investments in the region.
Strengthening tourism investment in the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean will be the focus of the aforementioned conference, where opportunities, incentives and the future of the sector will be worked on together.
President Luis Abinader said that this is the time to invest in the Dominican Republic.
“The legal security offered by our country is also one of the elements that many investors put all their trust in the Dominican Republic when it comes to investing,” said the Dominican president at the opening of the CHICOS conference.
He affirmed that the Dominican Republic plays a crucial role in this market, “in which we are at the head of all countries worldwide, leading the recovery, investment and flow of tourists,” he said.
“And in that sense, we have assumed the role that corresponds to us at this time, also putting to work all the machinery of the State in favor of this business sector so that they know that at all times they can count on the support of the Dominican Government,” said President Abinader.
The Minister of Tourism, David Collado, highlighted the importance of this conference to attract more investments to the tourism sector.
He expressed that investment in the industry has been such that the period October 2020 to the same month of 2022 has registered investments exceeding 6.4 billion dollars for the construction of 4,800 rooms.
“The great challenge for tourism now is to build more rooms in order to meet the demand for growth in the sector,” said Minister Collado in his opening speech at the CHICOS conference.
The Caribbean region, in addition to being one of the most important recipients of beach tourism, has shown the best performance in the recovery of tourism since the post-pandemic opening process.
The Dominican Republic plays a crucial role in this market, leading both foreign investment and tourist flows. Recently the tourism intelligence firm Forwardkeys published in its report of the most visited destinations in 2022, using data on flights made, bookings and air capacity, where Quisqueya tops this list with the highest growth.
The leadership of the Dominican Republic makes it the ideal place for the relaunch of tourism investments in the region.
Tourism is one of the main sources of investment in the Dominican Republic. When foreign investment is analyzed, in the last five years, 47% of this comes from tourism and real estate.
However, in hotel investment, local capital plays an important role, through direct and institutional investors, and in mixed agreements with foreign investment.
The Tourism Investment Promotion Law has been crucial in this result to stimulate investment.
Data
In the Dominican Republic there are more than 150 thousand hotel rooms and short-term stays (through digital platforms). These rooms could accommodate more than 14 million tourists per year. It is estimated that the total investment in hotels exceeds US$15 billion dollars. Fifty-four percent of hotel investment is of foreign origin, local investment is 14% and mixed investment is 31%.
One of the greatest strengths of the Dominican Republic is its diversification. Punta Cana has a strong influence of Spanish investment with 60% of the rooms.
Romana – Bayahibe has a mix of diverse investments, and stands out because 39% of the investment is of Italian origin, while in Sosúa-Cabarete, more than 60% of the investment is Dominican.
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