EFE, Madrid, Spain
The Dominican Republic closed this edition of the International Tourism Fair in Madrid (FITUR) with agreements for operations worth 3.645 billion dollars, of which 1.645 billion will already be invested in 2023, as announced to EFE by the Dominican minister, David Collado.
In an interview at the country's stand at FITUR, which began last Wednesday and ends this Sunday, the Minister of Tourism described this edition of one of the world's most important tourism fairs as a "success" for the Dominican Republic.
Collado explained that, during this week, his ministry was able to "develop agreements with travel agencies" that currently "guarantee the arrival to the Dominican Republic of some 711,000 foreigners, averaging the last two years," and added that the new goal is to reach 800,000.
"The European market is extremely important for us; even with the situation in Russia and Ukraine, we still receive 1,300,000 visitors annually from Europe, with Spain, France, England, Germany, and Italy being the main countries of origin."
"We are very happy with the results we have obtained," shared the Dominican, who also pointed out that the country signed agreements with the Spanish airlines Iberia and Air Europa, as well as with the German airline Tuis.
"We have a long-standing collaboration agreement with Iberia. This year we signed an agreement guaranteeing continued Iberia's extremely high occupancy rate of 80 percent," he explained
Collado, in turn, celebrated that Air Europa has "guaranteed to increase frequencies" on its flights to the Caribbean island as well as establishing "a flight between New York and Santo Domingo": "For us, this is great news because there is a large Dominican diaspora, approximately one million.".
"RECONQUER" SPAIN AND EUROPE
The minister joked about the busy schedule he had kept these days with Spanish and national tour operators and assured that his delegation came to "reconquer" Spain, alluding to the Spanish conquest of America.
"We came to win them back," he said, laughing, while referring to the "meeting with 350 companies" where they presented "the country, the numbers and the market niches.".
He also showed them how his Ministry's "intelligence center" works, which "visualizes how many European tourists arrive daily, their ages, whether they travel as a couple, as a family, whether they are going to do adventure tourism...".
One of the results of these studies, as he told EFE, is the appeal that his country has for "the Spanish Generation Z" (young people born between the 90s and 2000s).
"The numbers are skyrocketing, especially in the case of Spain, which sends 200,000 residents and our idea is to reach 250,000 or 300,000," he stated.
THE EUROPEAN MARKET “NEGLECTED” IN THE PAST
Collado lamented that his country had “neglected” the European market in the past, but assured that “since 2022” every effort has been made to improve connectivity with the continent.
“We share years of history and trade relations; the first hotels to open were Spanish,” he recalled.
Despite this, the Dominican official noted that the country's tourism sector “has just come out of a record year” with “some eight million tourists.”
“More than 7,100,000 arrived by air and 1,300,000 by cruise ship, while the World Tourism Organization issued a 2022 bulletin stating that global tourism fell by 30%, in the Dominican Republic it rose by 10%,” he asserted.
It is an industry that the island intends to continue nurturing and expanding, as it represents "15% of the Gross Domestic Product," provides "direct or indirect employment to 899,000 people," and contributes "$8.5 billion" annually to public coffers.
