Foreign travel was up by 181,887 visitors or 5.17% last year, mainly due to the growth in emerging tourism markets from South America and Russia that benefited from increased direct flights. An additional 107,434 travelers came from South America. Travel from North America was also up with 86,619 additional visitors. Meanwhile, travel from Europe was down by 9,181 travelers, and travel from Central America and the Caribbean also experienced a decline, with 2,838 fewer travelers.
Brazil was up by 39,472 passengers, Argentina 28,280, Colombia 9,719, Chile 9,133, Venezuela 7,883 and Peru 6,010 passengers. The number of arrivals from the US went up by 77,615, followed by Canada that showed a 6,232 increase in visitors.
Travel from Russia was up 44,693.
In Europe, France showed 15,441 more visitors, and Italy showed a 4,870 increase.
The Central Bank reported that 92.70% of visitors came for leisure, with 89.17% staying at hotels. Of the total number of visitors, 50.08% were women and 49.92% men. Most (63.86%) tourists were between the ages of 21 and 49.
The Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ) continues to lead as the main port of entry to the Dominican Republic. In 2011, the airport received 2,232,901 visitors, or 60.3% of the total passenger arrivals. Santo Domingo’s Las Americas International (SDQ) was second with 804,595 passengers, or 21,73%. Puerto Plata followed with 9.37%, Santiago’s El Cibao airport (STI) received 3.60% and La Romana (LRM) received 3.05%. Samana and Barahona airports combined received 1.95% of the passengers.
Arrivals to Punta Cana were up by 221,509 and Las Americas saw an increase of 34,740 passengers, while other airports saw slight reductions in arrivals.