President Hipolito Mejia has announced an allotment of US$25 million for a special campaign to raise public awareness abroad of the safety of vacationing in the DR. The contingency fund seeks to capture a share of the thousands of tourists who have cancelled their travel plans to destinations in the Middle East and Asia but could be convinced to travel to destinations with more positive tourism images.
The EFE Spanish news agency reports that 70% of the winter reservations to Egypt have been cancelled, both by US travellers as well as Europeans. Another country that is suffering major hotel cancellations is Turkey.
The World Tourism Organization says that countries with large number of Muslims are most vulnerable to the cancellations.
During the World Tourism Organization Summit held 1 October in Osaka, Japan, Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli of France expressed his optimism about long-term prospects for tourism. "Experience has shown that tourism has great resilience and great power to recover from a crisis; if travel is down one year then pent up demand will result in extraordinary growth the next year," he told attendees at the General Assembly.
The WTO reduced its short-term forecast for tourist arrivals in 2001 from 3% growth to 1.5% growth, reporting that many tourists are postponing holidays and switching to destinations that are closer to home. But the organization is maintaining its long-term growth forecast of 1 billion international tourists by 2010 and 1.5 billion by 2020. (4 October 2001)
