Dominican tourism has a multiplier effect on employment of more than five, which indicates that for each job generated by the hotel activity another five are created, and the city of Santiago is the one with the greatest relevance in this regard.
The impact of the hotel industry on the creation of additional jobs is the product of the activities carried out by tourists outside the hotel, transportation, entertainment, meals, as well as the value chains and consumption generated by employees in this and other sectors.
This is contained in the study “Dominican Tourism: a decade of contributions 2009-2019”, presented by Banco Popular and the Association of Hotels and Tourism of the Dominican Republic (Asonahores), which collects that the sector affects 10.1% of the total jobs in the country, equivalent to about 500,000 jobs.
Santiago is the destination with the greatest multiplier effect in the creation of jobs in the hotel industry, 6.44 jobs for each one. In Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata, for each job position in the tourist activity, 5.4 are generated in other sectors.
In the La Altagracia province (Punta Cana-Bávaro), for every job generated by tourism, it causes the creation of another 5.2 jobs in other areas, the research indicates.
Raúl Ovalles, director of the consulting firm Analytica and who presented the study, explained that hotels employed in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 95,509 while they generated 153,864 direct jobs, 142,865 indirect and 180,826 induced jobs, totaling 573,063 work positions.
“This implies that one out of every eight jobs generated in the Dominican labor market comes from the entire value chain of the tourism sector. These jobs increased by 163,555 when comparing what was generated in 2019 versus 2009, ”explained Ovalles.
In the referred period of the study, the country went from having 65,849 hotel rooms to 82,221, an increase of 16,372 rooms.
Between 2009 and 2019, hotel occupancy increased from 66% to 71.6%.
Tourism activity in the country has become a magnet for foreign direct investment (FDI), totaling US$5,207 million between 2009 and 2019, a period in which the sector went from receiving investments of US$186 million to US$994.2 million.
“Despite the crisis of 2019, the total of FDI reached the historical figure with 994.2 million in the tourism sector. One out of every three dollars that entered the country in foreign investment was destined to the tourism sector ”, he highlighted.
Likewise, the investigation shows that eight out of every 10 dollars that entered the Dominican Republic for tourism remain in the country and 60% of all profits have been reinvested.
The presentation of the study was attended by the Minister of Tourism, David Collado; the president of Banco Popular, Christopher Paniagua; the president of Asonahores, Rafael Blanco Tejera, the president of the National Council of Private Enterprise (Conep), Pedro Brache, among other business leaders in the country.
Source:
Diario Libre
