Is DR tourism dropping

Tourism numbers are actually up, however, this is only the case in the Punta Cana/Bavaro area. I don't have the numbers to back it up right now, but DR1 TRavel News periodically publishes numbers from the Ministry of Tourism (I believe) and they have confirmed this the last few times I read it, last publication to this effect was a few weeks ago.

Keep in mind that DR Tourism has more tourists from outside the US, then inside, so the credit crunch is more or less limited to the US and won't effect the DR significantly, unless of course the rest of world falls into a 'virtual' recession.

Puerto Plata

It is difficult to get flights/packages to Puerto Plata now from Eastern Canada. It used to be that you could fly direct from Moncton and Fredericton. Now you can only go to Puerto Plata from Halifax. Punta Cana seems to be the area that tour companies are promoting.

Many tourists (not my opinion) feel that the Puerto Plata area needs some re-vamping as they see it as being run down compared to Punta Cana.

Here's the info... updated regularly by the central bank.
Accessible by month/year, port of entry, country of origin... etc, etc.
Very nice info & easily accessible if you have Excel.
Data goes back for years.

Jan-Jun comparison of arrivals

YEAR Punta Cana...........Puerto Plata
2007 1,152,020............. 366,171
2008 1,234,528............. 371,414<TABLE style="WIDTH: 86pt; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=115 border=0 x:str><COLGROUP><COL style="WIDTH: 86pt; mso-width-source: userset; mso-width-alt: 4906" width=115><TBODY><TR style="HEIGHT: 15.75pt" height=21><TD class=xl25 style="BORDER-RIGHT: #f0f0f0; BORDER-TOP: #f0f0f0; BORDER-LEFT: #f0f0f0; WIDTH: 86pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #f0f0f0; HEIGHT: 15.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" align=right width=115 height=21 x:num="1234528"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Link:
Banco Central de la Repblica Dominicana

Up

POP area visitor numbers are up YTD vs. last year and expected to climb when Santiago loses flights from U.S. carriers; ie: Dominican traffic previously going to Cibao region. That will be in Sept. according to airline published cancellations and schedules. Jet Blue can't pick up all the slack, but a considerable amount out of Boston and NY areas to SDQ and Cibao they will. An unprecedented shift away from AA. For Canadians both West Jet and Skyservice have indicated in press releases they intend to have strong Winter 08/09 schedules to the North Coast. It's in their websites and promo stuff. World economics notwithstanding.

Conchman said:

Keep in mind that DR Tourism has more tourists from outside the US, then inside, so the credit crunch is more or less limited to the US and won't effect the DR significantly, unless of course the rest of world falls into a 'virtual' recession.

Click to expand...

Central Bank indicates YTD 2008:
North America 1.24 million (460k Canada, 760k US, 15k Mexico)
Central/Caribbean .11 million
South America .14 million
Asia .05 million
Europe .81 million
(2.28 million foreign visitors YTD)

Breakdown by country available on their website.

CFA123 said:

Central Bank indicates YTD 2008:
North America 1.24 million (460k Canada, 760k US, 15k Mexico)
Central/Caribbean .11 million
South America .14 million
Asia .05 million
Europe .81 million
(2.28 million foreign visitors YTD)

Breakdown by country available on their website.

Click to expand...

Wow! Roughly a third of all DR tourists are from the US? That's a much bigger chunk than I thought.(my guess was about 15-20%)

edm7583 said:

Wow! Roughly a third of all DR tourists are from the US? That's a much bigger chunk than I thought.(my guess was about 15-20%)

Click to expand...

Many of those are Dominican living in the US coming back to see family. It's statistically difficult to separate those from the actual tourist in the traditional sense.

Bingo

cobraboy said:

Many of those are Dominican living in the US coming back to see family. It's statistically difficult to separate those from the actual tourist in the traditional sense.

Click to expand...

In fact, that's all I see on the plane with me every time I visit. But then, I never fly into Puerto Plata or Punta Canta. Always SDQ and STI.

Actually, it's not that hard to figure out, and I think they already do it. All you have to do is to figure out a)if they are Dominican nationals and/or b) if they are visiting relatives. That should help identify over ninety percent of the Dominican Yorks.

Yup, the Central Bank has many way of slicing the numbers, some of which are:

Country of Residence, Nationality, Dominican non-Resident (Dominican living abroad), Foreign Resident (expat), and Foreign non-Resident (your typical tourist).