In a press conference at the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Minister David Collado, Deputy Minister Jacqueline Mora and the president of the National Hotel & Tourism Association Rafael Blanco Tejera announced the recovery of the Dominican tourism sector. “Today, I can say here, with full confidence, as Minister of Tourism and coordinator of the Tourism Cabinet, that tourism in the Dominican Republic has recovered in its entirety,” said Tourism Minister David Collado when presenting the sector’s results on Monday, 4 April 2022.
The first quarter of 2022 closes at 1,714,947 non-residents, the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. There is hope 2022 will be a record year for tourism in the country. A Ministry of Tourism press release indicates the forecast is for the year to end with more than seven million tourist arrivals.
Collado at the statistics update event at the Hotel Embajador described Dominican tourism as “strong, solid and mature.” He said the process of recovery of the outbound markets of tourists to the Dominican Republic was consolidated in March.
This happened even when the Dominican tourism sector suffered a blow when the Russian-Ukranian war shut down the many direct flights from Russian and Ukranian airports, removing flights that were the source of around 10% of Dominican tourism inflows. The timely reactivation of tourists coming from Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and Argentina, among other major source markets, is filling in the void left by the around 60,000 tourists that would have come from Russia and Ukraine in March.
During the third month of the year 617,756 non-residents traveled here, 197% more than in March 2021, the first year of recovery. 84% of these non-resident visitors are of foreign origin and the remaining 16% of Dominican origin. 71% of the non-resident arrivals came from North America and the Caribbean, 19% from Europe.
61% of this month’s influx of visitors entered through the Punta Cana airport, 22% through Las Americas, 10% from Santiago, 5% through Puerto Plata, 1% through La Romana, and the remaining through the Samana airport.
Tourist satisfaction during March 2022 was 4.4 out of 5 stars and 93% of those surveyed stated that they would return to the Dominican Republic. 87% of those surveyed have high satisfaction with Dominican beaches.
Preliminary estimates from the Ministry of Tourism revealed there were 5,100 inbound commercial flights with an occupancy rate of 76% on more than 200 routes, connecting the country to 159 cities through 160 different airlines.
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Mitur
5 April 2022