“In a few years, the entire country will be a tourist destination”
Tourism development is an “unstoppable process” and in a few years “the entire country will be a holiday destination, ” according to veteran tourism entrepreneur Frank Ranieri, who suggested that the goal is to receive 17 million tourists by 2035.
While participating as a guest speaker at a breakfast conference hosted by the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, attended by Metropolitan Archbishop Monsignor Francisco Ozoria, Ranieri stated, “Within a few years, the entire country will be a tourist destination. Getting there has not been easy and staying at the top will require a lot of vision, work and support from the various sectors nationwide.”
Rainieri explained that the onset of tourism in the 1970s was slow because it was a little-known activity, but it gained ground.
He quoted historian Frank Moya Pons, who, in his analysis of the country’s evolution from 1963 to 2013, stated that “tourism has become the main driving force for foreign exchange and one of the most powerful factors of change the country has seen throughout its history.”
He considered that Moya Pons’ assessment in 2013 “is part of history, and since then growth has been unstoppable, even with global crises such as COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.”
Rainieri defined tourism as “a social, cultural and economic phenomenon that has spawned a multibillion-dollar global industry.”
“And it has been the great leap to development for our country, going from being a small agrarian economy to a global tourism giant. Like everything in life, it has its flaws and problems, but it is up to us to avail of the good and improve the bad,” he said.
He pointed out that in 2023, tourism contributed 9,828 million dollars to the Dominican economy, while exports of the other areas of the economy were 11,933 million dollars, according to preliminary figures from the Central Bank.
He stated that the joint work of the hotel industry, the Ministry of Tourism and President Luis Abinader, plus the support of the community of Verón-Punta Cana, have achieved double-digit growth in the Punta Cana area and that its almost 50,000 hotel rooms generating between 14% and 16% of the country’s gross domestic product, 93,000 direct jobs and approximately 323,000 indirect jobs.
Tourism expands throughout the country
Rainieri highlighted that 2024 started out with 50,000 rooms in the Punta Cana-Miches area; with Bayahibe and La Romana as consolidated, Puerto Plata in the north with two cruise terminals and the real estate tourism project in Bergatín, and Cabarete continues to grow.
In the northeast, he noted that Samana will soon have two cruise ports and the northern part of the peninsula is increasing the number of rooms.
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