Let’s take care of the garment of Dominican tourism
Punta Cana.-Despite being linked for more than 10 years to the Information and Communication Center (CICOM), a press services, public relations, strategic communication and crisis management company, for which I have covered important fairs and events in the main Dominican industry, I have to confess that I am a novice in knowledge about the country’s tourism.
However, to my amazement, last week I was covering the XXXV Trade Fair of the Hotel and Tourism Association of the Dominican Republic, Asonahores 2023, held at Blue Mall Punta Cana from September 6 to 8, and I have to confess my amazement due to the numbers of tourism and its contribution to the Dominican economy, converted into the main development instrument for the entire country.
An event, whose assembly cost around RD$30.0 million pesos, and brought together the main actors of the tourist activity, organized with a high organizational level and attended by more than 12 thousand visitors, for which four thousand credentials were issued. suppliers, buyers and direct stakeholders in the tourist offer.
According to the numbers presented at the most important commercial event in national tourism, in which 170 product and service companies participated – 40% new, in relation to previous years – they occupied the 342 stands installed in the Blue Convention Center Mall Punta Cana. The presence of trade missions from the United States and Costa Rica was highlighted, which were part of the commercial offer of the fair.
Stop to think about this number, so far this year the tourism industry, transversal to the country’s productive apparatus, due to the chain of supply companies, has done business for RD$288,000 million pesos, which will reach around RD$300,000 millions in purchases of a wide variety of products and services.
During the Asonahores trade fair I was able to discover that the Spanish companies that blindly trusted the development of Dominican tourism, as David Llibre said, and own 60% of the hotel rooms in the Dominican Republic with 47 thousand, distributed in 98 hotels, which represent 24 Spanish hotel chains, have invested around US$6 billion dollars in the country.
This developed and advanced tourism that attracts a varied range of visitors from Canada, the United States, the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean is the consumer of everything produced by the country’s productive apparatus.
That is why, in addition to my astonishment at the tourism numbers, from today I register among the staunch defenders of the main Dominican industry, under the slogan: Let’s defend Tourism.
