The Dominican Republic?s Central Bank statistics show that the United States continues to lead in the number of foreign air arrivals. The numbers show US travel for the first quarter of the year accounting for 28.6% of the total 243,264 tourist arrivals ? a slight increase over last year when US travelers accounted for 28.5% of the total. Canada as a source market declined slightly, from 27.8% in 2003 to 26.4% (224,145) this year from January through March.
Other countries representing 4% or more of total foreign tourist arrivals are: France with 12.7% (107,990), Germany with 7.1% (60,484), Spain with 5.2% (43,792) and UK and Italy with 4.6% each (39,334 and 38,720, respectively).
Of these arrivals, 96.8% declared their travel for vacation purposes and 2.2% came for business or convention activity.
The breakdown by gender was 50.6% men and 49.4% women. Of the total, 14.4% were under 20 years of age, 30.6% were between 21 and 35 years, 28.5% were 36 to 49 years old, and 26.5% were 50 years or older.