UNWTO recognizes the Dominican Republic for tourism recovery

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader and Minister of Tourism, David Collado, received the recognition granted by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for ranking as the number one country in tourism recovery.

Abinader said that the income generated by the tourism sector reached US$5,700 million.

“When we came to the Government, we saw that the economic growth of the industrial sector was beginning to recover, the free zone sector as well, among others, but not the tourism sector, and if we did not recover that sector, we would not recover the Dominican economy.”

He also reiterated that they were “doing the right thing” even if others criticized the measures that his government implemented.

Abinader also attributed the decrease in debt in relation to GDP last year, which went from 69% to 62%, because of tourism.

Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism David Collado said that even though the current war between Russia and Ukraine has threatened the sector, thousands of foreigners continue to visit the country, directly benefiting tourism.

“Today we can say that we recovered tourism and that we made history having lost 60 days ago about 60 thousand foreigners per month with the war between Russia and Ukraine, we recovered and had the best month of April in history, we reinvented ourselves”.

Collado is hopeful that they will continue to overcome all the adversities that may come their way.

“In December, in the midst of the omicron, we had a record arrival of about 726,000 foreigners. We had the best quarter in the history of tourism in the midst of the pandemic”.

The Secretary-General of the UNWTO, Zurab Pololikashvili, highlighted that the Dominican tourism model stands out for achieving the most successful recovery of the industry, reaching record figures in the arrival of tourists.