Tourism generates record with best month in D.R. history and more than 7 million tourists in 2022

Santo Domingo, D.R. January 12, 2023.- Minister of Tourism David Collado presented the results of Dominican tourism in 2022 where record figures never seen before were reached. Together with the President of the Republic, Luis Abinader, the official announced that for the first time in history the country surpassed 7 million tourists in one year, reaching a total of 7,165,387 from January to December 2022.

Collado also noted that last December was the best month in the history of Dominican tourism, surpassing for the first time the three quarters of a million tourists, with a total of 765,910 visitors.

President Luis Abinader affirmed that these results are the fruit of the transparent, planned and determined work of his government to achieve that the main industry of the country had an extraordinary recovery that has been an example in the world.

“Our tourism industry is changing and has been recognized as the most resilient in the world,” said the president who stressed that “this result is thanks to the work of all Dominicans who believe that we can do things right, in a private sector that decided to work with the government to achieve recovery in record time, and in a government that works tirelessly and transparently to achieve a better country”.

Minister Collado also highlighted that in 2022 the record number of cruise ship visitors visiting the country was broken, totaling 1,311,129 cruise passengers last year.

“We grew by 10% compared to 2019 in terms of tourist arrivals by air and we grew by 20% in terms of visitor arrivals by cruise ships compared to that year, so we reached an unprecedented total of 8.47 million visitors that the Dominican Republic had in 2022, thanks to the work of promotion with intelligence and transparency that we are doing in this administration.”

In December, the airport with the highest number of tourist arrivals was Punta Cana with more than 425 thousand, followed by Las Americas with 206 thousand tourists. While the number one country of origin of tourists to the Dominican Republic was the United States, followed by Canada, Colombia, Argentina and Germany.

Another of the record figures presented at the event was that for the first time the tourism sector generated more than 8 billion dollars in foreign exchange, according to preliminary data that are pending confirmation by the Central Bank, but are estimated at 8.6 million dollars in foreign exchange.

Regarding hotel occupancy, it was indicated that it reached 76% nationwide in December 2022, surpassing the 69% occupancy rate in 2019 prior to the pandemic. The destinations with the highest occupancy were Punta Cana-Bavaro and Romana-Bayahibe with 79% and 78% respectively.