A brief in Hoy newspaper points out that the Ministry of Tourism has spent US$7 million on advertising campaigns seeking to target the US market in 1999. Minister of Tourism Felix Jiménez told the newspaper that as a result of the campaign there has been an increase in US visitors, primarily to Punta Cana. He said that in 1996, arrivals from the US were 22,727, in 1997 they increased to 41,000, and in 1998, they grew to 65,000. He said that during the first six months of this year, some 61,000 US tourists arrived. He expects arrivals to be more than 110,000 from the US by year’s end. The average stay of US tourists in Dominican hotels was 3.1 days in 1996, 4.6 days in 1997, 3.8 days in 1998, and an estimated 2.7 days in 1999.
