The president of the National Hotels and Tourism Association (Asonahores) says most hotels show “clear signs of recovery,” a full year after the country shut its borders and the tourist industry was reduced to near zero. According to the association, the current influx of tourists is near the 1998 level, but the 42% hotel occupancy rate is the best so far.
March 2020 saw the beginning of three and a half months of empty beaches and hundreds of thousands of hotel, travel and tourism staff were laid off. In total, during all of 2020, the Dominican Republic received just 2.4 million tourists, way down from the 6.4 million in 2019.
President Abinader has recently mentioned that several tens of thousands of employees have been reincorporated into their old jobs. And he recently cut the ribbon on a multi-million dollar refurbishment of Macao Beach, once described by former ambassador John Bartlow Martin as “25 kilometers of beautiful, empty beach.”
Tourism Minister David Collado told reporters that the president calls him every morning to hear how the reservations at the hotels are developing. He noted that in Punta Cana, the nation’s most visited area, the hotels receive reservations near pre-pandemic levels.
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Diario Libre
21 March 2021