The Dominican Republic has exceeded, for the first time, pre-pandemic levels in tourist arrivals, a sign of the recovery of the main sector of the country’s economy.
Last September, 365,544 tourists exceeded by 14% the data of September 2019, which has meant an absolute record, surpassing even, by 0.5%, the data of 2018, which signed the best month of September.
David Collado, Dominican Minister of Tourism, pointed out these data wanting to value as ‘historic’ to achieve this record.
The recovery of tourism in the Dominican Republic has been sustained by the United States, its first market, and thanks to the recent opening to tourism from Russia, which has been placed as the second issuing country, ahead of Spain and Colombia.
It should be noted that 86.5% of the hotel rooms have already reopened and 54.5% of them were occupied despite the fact that September, at the height of the hurricane season, is traditionally the worst month of the year in the country.
Minister Collado wanted to point out that the prospects are very good in relation to the high season, during the Christmas holidays and, looking ahead to 2022, which is going to be ‘the year of recovery’.
Flight reservation data from the ForwardKeys company indicate that the Dominican Republic is the ‘leader’ in the recovery of tourism in all of Latin America, surpassing countries such as Mexico and Brazil in terms of percentage of improved reservations.
Air ticket bookings, between October and December 2021, are in a range of between 12 and 22% above those made in the same period in 2019.
From the Ministry of Tourism, the arrival of 1.5 million foreign tourists is expected until December, reaching 4.8 million in 2021, ‘numbers that were not even dreamed of at the beginning of the year’.
From Asonahores, the National Association of Hotels and Restaurants, its president, Rafael Blanco, wanted to emphasize that investments in the sector ‘are probably at their best moment’, and have increased during the pandemic.
