The recovery of tourism in the Dominican Republic depends on the restoration of normalcy in source markets of the Dominican Republic. With the exception of Canada, the country’s main tourism markets are greatly affected by Covid-19 outbreaks. Yet, thousands of tourists, nevertheless, have decided to travel and get away from it all. This is reflected in the recent tourism statistics of the Dominican Republic.
The country is open to visitors. Tourism Minister David Collado says more and more hotels have reopened as international tourism flow resumes. He said more than 30 hotels with 7,338 hotel rooms have reopened in the past 100 days of the Abinader administration. He spoke of the gradual resuming of charter flights. He spoke of the approval of 84 new charter flights. This means 4,353 flights are authorized for November 2020 to April 2021 period, for 870,000 seats on board planes coming to the Dominican Republic.
He said the flow of tourists in November was of more than 101,000 tourists. This is a 100% increase compared to August 2020, the first month after the reopening of airports at the start of July 2020. Airports had shut down in March due to the Covid-19 virus.
Collado also said that the pace of investment in tourism has picked up considerably. He said that the Department of Planning and Projects evaluated 174 projects in the past 100 days. This is around 12 initiatives a week, making it 50% more than the highest period in the past 10 years.
He said the Council of Tourism Promotion (CONFOTUR) has approved more than 2,300 new rooms, for a total of 14,600 under construction to be added to the 84,000 existing ones, a sign of investor confidence.
He spoke of new comprehensive tourism development plans for Puerto Plata and Puerto Plata, efforts for improvements of beaches, and public-private sargassum management initiatives.
He also spoke of the health protocol certification programs carried out at more than 100 hotels nationwide.
For the 6 December 2020 deadline, Worldometer lists the 1M deaths per inhabitant rate for the Dominican Republic at 215. According to the same 1M deaths statistics, fewer people have died of Covid-19 in the Dominican Republic than in Italy at 1,003, Spain at 989, the United Kingdom at 903, Argentina at 876, the United States at 872, France at 844, Brazil at 830, Colombia at 740 and Canada at 336, all major markets for Dominican tourism.
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Ministry of Tourism
8 December 2020