Cruise ship arrivals to the Dominican Republic were up 37% in 2017 compared to 2016. Dominican cruise ship ports received a boost in the months of November and December when cruise lines chose these for stops that would have been made at ports that were damaged during the September hurricanes Irma and Maria, including St. Maarten, Turks & Caicos, among others. The new arrivals almost doubled the programmed arrivals for these ports.
The Ministry of Tourism reported that 1,546,444 visitors arrived by sea in 2017, up 37.45% compared to the same period in 2016.
The Amber Cove terminal in Puerto Plata on the north coast is now the leading cruise ship port in the country, surpassing the Casa de Campo Port in La Romana on the southeast coast. Amber Cove saw a 40.15% increase in passengers in 2017, for a total of 659,622 arrivals. The Casa de Campo Port in La Romana, that up to the first quarter of 2017, had been the leading port in numbers of cruise ship arrivals, showed a 17.91% increase in arrivals, for 562,652 visitors this 2017.
Ministry of Tourism statistics showed that 29 ships touched port at Amber Cove in December, 49.5% more than in 2016, when there were 20 ships docking at the port. The Carnival Cruise port received the most additional port stops this winter cruise season.
There were also record numbers in arrivals to the ports of Samaná on the northeast with 87,803 arrivals and Cap Cana on the east, with 47,364 arrivals in its first year, including crews. The city of Santo Domingo, on the south central coast, is the third most important port in number of arrivals with a record 189,003 arrivals this year, for a 75.34% increase over arrivals in 2016 that were 107,063.
Cruise ship lines from Pullmantur, Norwegian, Carnival, Royal Princess, Costa Pacifica among others docked at the Dominican ports.
The Ministry of Tourism also reported 6,187,542 non-resident air arrivals in 2017, a 4% increase over the 5,959,347 tourist arrivals in 2016. This brings the overall total to almost 8 million tourist arrivals in 2017.
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MITUR
16 January 2018
