Nearly 600,000 tourists from the United States visited the Dominican Republic in the first quarter of 2006. The flow of tourists from the US is experiencing an upswing. Of the 987,599 tourists who visited the DR in the first three months of the year, 55% were from the USA. The tourism authorities attribute the steady increase in American tourists to the advertising campaign currently under way in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Golf Magazine and other publications. This year saw an increase of 79,000 tourists compared to the 2005 figures, and represents a growth of 8.8%, perhaps one of the highest in the area. Officials from the Ministry of Tourism, as well as Enrique de Marchena Kaluche, the hotel association president, told El Caribe reporters that such good figures for the first quarter promise to make this an “excellent” year for the sector.