SANTO DOMINGO.– The growth that Dominican tourism has experienced in recent years has brought new developments in terms of the destinations that have been attracted to the land of merengue, with visitors from non-traditional countries registering significant increases in the current year 2023.
Oceania and Africa are noted as having the greatest growth potential, varying the tradition of traditional markets such as North America and Europe, which are normally responsible for the arrival of millions of visitors each year to the Dominican Republic.
According to data from the Central Bank, published by Diario Libre, in the first seven months of 2023, 1,341 resident passengers arrived from Oceania, representing a growth of 86.1% compared to the same period in 2021, when only 187 tourists arrived.
Of that number, more than 1,000 tourists reside in Australia and 177 in New Zealand, while French Polynesia (21 people), Guam (19), New Caledonia (17), Western Samoa (8), Fiji (4) and Kiribati make up the eight countries from which tourists traveled to stay overnight in the Dominican Republic.
Meanwhile, the flow of African tourists increased by 81.7% between January and July of this year, rising from just 497 foreign visitors to 2,702 people residing in 50 countries across the continent. The nations that sent the most tourists were South Africa, Morocco, and Nigeria, according to the media outlet.
In South America, growth was 71.9%, rising from 157,673 passengers in January-July 2021 to 558,917 in the first seven months of this year. Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Peru are, in that order, the five countries from which the most visitors were sent.
One of the reasons that explains this trend is the improvement of air connectivity between the Dominican Republic and South America, with the emergence of new routeswithlow-cost airlines.
European marketing
As for the European market, which is the second most important for the tourism industry after the North American market, it has experienced a growth of 60% between January-July 2021 and the same period in 2023.
However, this pace has slowed by 44.2%, following the arrival of just over half a million foreigners so far this year, compared to over 800,000 in 2022.
This is due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, inflation, and high aviation fuel costs, which have limited tourists' ability to travel.
Meanwhile, the North American market has seen the slowest growth over the past two years and seven months. From January to July of this year, 2,732,217 tourists from Canada, the United States, and Mexico flew to the country, a 54.9% increase compared to the same period in 2021, when 1,231,978 tourists visited.
During the presentation of the tourism statistics for the first half of this year, the technical vice-minister of the Ministry of Tourism, Jacqueline Mora, explained that the increase in the arrival of foreigners from other latitudes was part of a strategy of the institution to compensate for the drop in tourists from the European market, a trend that has continued until July.
