In the campaign leading up to the 2012 elections, candidate Danilo Medina promised that he would activate the tourism sector and attract 10 million tourists a year by 2022. The goal is still far from being realized and projections are that it will take at least another decade to achieve. The average increase in tourists over the past eight years has been 5.2%, according to the Central Bank. In average numbers, between 2012 and 2019, the country was visited each year by 267,000 new tourists.
In 2019, the country was visited by 6,446,000 tourists, slightly down from 2018 (6,569,000). A large part of this decrease has been attributed to the deaths of some tourists in hotels in the East that produced a well-coordinated negative media blitz. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would issue a toxicology report that concluded the tourists had died for natural causes, as determined by the forensic autopsies in the Dominican Republic.
Starting in 2020, the country will need in excess of three million new visitors over two years to reach the ten million tourist goal by 2022. In Madrid, Spain, the Dominican Republic is participating in the huge International Tourism Fair (FITUR) in a major effort to position itself as the leading Caribbean tourism destination.
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Diario Libre
El Caribe
22 January 2020