Hotel occupancy in Santo Domingo was 42% in May, according to the Santo Domingo Hotel Association. Last year, occupancy in May was at 61%. Overall, during the first quarter of the year, hotel occupancy in Santo Domingo declined 20.5%.
City occupancy is down because Santo Domingo depends mainly on business activities, which have suffered a slowdown during this electoral year and given the present recession-stagflation affecting the Dominican Republic.
As reported in Diario Libre, Paola Dimitri, the director of the city hotel organization, attributed the decline to the economic instability, lack of confidence in the business community translating to less meetings and conventions in the city and an additional 400 new hotel rooms that went on the market from July to December 2003. These included the Courtyard Mariott and the Sofitel Nicolas de Ovando.
The newspaper points out that Santo Domingo is the exception in the tourism business in the DR. Occupancy in Boca Chica and Juan Dolio is up 3.7%, La Romana-Bayahibe posted a 5.3% increase, Punta Cana and Bavaro have sustained a 1% increase each, Puerto Plata has shown a strong recovery with 22% more this year, Sosua and Cabarete, also in Puerto Plata, are showing 21.5% occupancy increases, and even Samana has posted a 5.3% improvement.