Now eyeing 12 million visitors amid continued tourism boom

The Dominican Republic is now encountering what is becoming a new golden age of tourism, ushering in a record-breaking period that has shown no signs of slowing down.

The destination is easily the most visitors of any destination in the wider Caribbean. The current tourism surge has resulted in 10.3 million total visitors last year (including air and sea arrivals), which can be traced in part back to the way the country navigated the pandemic when many travellers considered the Dominican Republic when they might not have otherwise done so, explained Dom Rep’s Vice Minister of Tourism, Jacqueline Mora.

While many of its neighbouring destinations were closed in the summer of 2020, the Dom Rep was open and it never closed. In fact, the country’s navigation of the pandemic helped kick off the current surge being experienced,

Goal of attaining 12 million visitors

Now, Dom Rep has even bigger goals with the ambition of reaching 12 million total visitors in 2024, Mora told Caribbean Journal during the country’s Miami trade show at the JW Marriott Marquis hotel. The first step in this goal is to highlight new travel niches and categories. 

These include growing the luxury sector to making a bigger foray into experiences highlighting the fast-growing capital, Santo Domingo, as a gastronomic destination growing the golf market and the watersports sector, along with a significant push in the events sector, as in weddings, meeting and conventions. 

However, the biggest priority is to highlight destinations beyond the country’s traditional stronghold of Punta Cana, building up new destinations, and new hotels and filling them up with new travellers. That includes places like Miches, the destination on the bay of Samana that now has seven new major tourism investments to join existing resorts from brands like Club Med and Temptation. 

In-development destinations 

Then there are in-development destinations like Pedernales on the south coast, where the country’s government is making big investments in public infrastructure. In the north, there’s the Punta Bergantin project on the north coast, one that will include a golf course, a movie studio, among other developments. 

It also involves strengthening and repositioning destinations like Santo Domingo, which has been seeing a wave of new airlift from the United States; and Puerto Plata, with the latter set for a major boost with the construction of a road connecting it to the popular city of Santiago – and, more crucially, Santiago’s heavily-trafficked airport. 

The idea, Mora said, is to distinguish the country’s different hotspots with a unique brand identity — and create an identity for each individual destination.