Fitur is the annual tourism fair organized by Spain to promote its successful tourism products. It dates back to 1980.
In reality, Fitur is Spain and Spain is the second country in the world in the number of tourists per year, exceeding 71.7 million in 2022 with a population of more than 47.5 million inhabitants, that is, Spain receives 1.5 times more tourists per inhabitant per year. This makes it the leading Hispanic country in the tourism sector.
Spain is our mother country, a historical cultural cradle of the world, with an amazing beauty where every region and every corner has its charm, with an almost perfect climate, phenomenal gastronomy, and dreamy nights. It has enjoyed a functional democracy for 50 years, it is a safe country and has a road system and road education that allows you to travel it inch by inch.
Why is that? Well, my colleague Nelson Espinal Báez invited me to write about the “Fitur phenomenon”, and Bernardo Vega jokingly asked if there was anyone left in our country during the Fitur week.
The phenomenon is not Fitur, it is Spain, and the attraction is not Fitur either, it is the income produced by the tourism sector in the Dominican Republic.
With the experience of having been in 22 of the 44 editions of Fitur, I can say that the times are long gone when Asonahores had as a proposal to understand the tourism sector, its transforming and integrating potential of knowledge and the economy of the Dominican Republic and the country.
Gone are the first efforts to ensure that politicians, legislators, and journalists, public opinion makers, attended Fitur and wrote about tourism. Today, no one wants to stay on the “tourism sector’s success train”.
“Tourism is everyone’s business”.
That said, the phenomenon is of domestic manufacture. Not many Fitur stands have the levels of presence and attendance of ours. We are no longer just the hospitality and tourism professionals, it is the investors, bankers, builders, insurers, tobacconists, and certainly, lawyers and industry consultants who make a massive presence; and well the attendance we achieve it with a “living stand”, music, tobacco, rum and smiling people.
And the fact is that 10.3 million visitors (air and cruise ship tourists) in a population of 11 million is an impact number and so are the more than 8.5 billion dollars produced by the tourism sector in 2023.
I believe that today we can affirm that “tourism is everyone’s business”, a phrase with which I began my tenure at Asonahores in 2004.
I must also quote Minister David Collado, “It has been a joint effort, public-private sector”.
The author is a lawyer and expert in foreign investment and tourism and was president of the Association of Hotels and Tourism of the Dominican Republic (ASONAHORES).
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