Tourism destinations still lag behind

Santo Domingo.- Last year, Dominican tourist destinations received 4,994,309 non-resident visitors, an amount that represents 77.4% when compared to the 6,446,036 tourists who arrived in 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the average hotel occupancy has not managed to recover at the same rate as the arrival of tourists, according to statistics from the Central Bank (BC).

From an average occupancy of hotel rooms of 71.6% in 2019, it fell to 40.5% the following year, when COVID-19 forced an almost complete paralysis of tourist activity between April and June 2020.

That year 2,405,315 non-resident visitors arrived in the country.

However, the improvement in the arrival of non-resident foreigners during 2021, the occupation of hotel rooms did not suffer the same fate. The figures indicate that last year it averaged 51%, an improvement of just 10.5 percentage points from 2020.