In Davos, President Luis Abinader participated on the “Rethinking and revitalizing travel and tourism” panel, where he suggested that a successful strategy to recover tourism, combined with a consistent effort in health care, are the key to the recovery of the Dominican economy.
He said this is also why international organizations that deal with tourism, health and the economy present the Dominican Republic as a country that has been successful in facing the crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, participants spoke about possible policies and actions to reimagine and revitalize tourism.
Like the other five speakers, President Abinader talk was brief, but after the panel was broadcast over Internet channels, a 15 minute question time ensued where the President became the center of the informal exchange that occurred.
The fellow panelists were Keir Simmons, international correspondent of NBC News; Antonio Capuano, CEO of Marriott International; Haifa Bint Mohammed Al Saud, Deputy Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia; S. Iswaran, Minister of Transport of Singapore; and Ruzwana Bashir, rom Peek.com.
When first addressing the panel, Abinader said that the experiences provided by the other participants “are very good”, but to understand what was done in the Dominican Republic, he had to explain that he assumed the presidency of the country in August 2020, with the economy and tourism paralyzed by the covid-19 pandemic.
He said that, aware that tourism accounts for more than 20% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and about 20 percent of jobs in the country, and analyzing the economic dynamics, “we knew that our economy would not kick off unless tourism recovered. We had to strike a balance between preserving the health of our people and, at the same time, opening up the economy.”
He explained that to understand how to proceed, surveys and focus groups were carried out in the USA, which is the main issuing market, which was beginning to open. We learned that after months of lockdown “people wanted to get out” and were seduced by the image of Dominican sand and sea landscape, but “they were afraid of the consequences of getting sick.”
Analyzing options, he explained, we decided “to create the only covid-19 insurance, the only one in the world, which was free for anyone who came to the Dominican Republic. That’s how we gained the trust of the people who started flying to our country.”
To the panel’s question: “Did it cost a lot?”, the president replied: “It did indeed, but it would have cost more if tourists hadn’t come. That was our analysis. In addition, the insurer was state-owned. But, it must also be said that only 0.7% of the tourists we received used it, because they had to be tested for Covid when they arrived in the country.”
“We started working with insurance, but at the same time, we had one of the fastest vaccine programs in America, and we also started vaccinating hotel employees.” Our decision was aimed at opening the country to tourism to recover the economy.
Source:
Hoy
