TORONTO — Following the news that it welcomed a record number of Canadians in 2017, the Dominican Republic has announced a slew of new developments across the island.
The country has begun a US$195 million development in the Southwest region of Los Corbanitos, Baní called Playa de Puntarena Hotel and Condominiums featuring brand new hotels, luxury apartments, a recreation area, bars, restaurants and a marina. A highway beginning in Santo Domingo will be extended to the Southwest in order to increase tourism connectivity from the capital city.
In the South, the Perla de Sur project will bring 1,200 hotel rooms over multiple stages in the coming years. The first stage will be ‘La Casita’ and ‘La Casita Village’, a series of boutique hotels, all featuring an eco-friendly design. The final phase will include a marina and convention centre.
A new AMResorts property is coming to Macao, comprising three hotels, a convention centre, green areas, sports facilities and a total of 2,313 rooms.
In addition, Club Med is set to begin development of a hotel project named ‘Miches’ in Altamira. Upon completion in 2019, it will be a 5-Trident rated resort, the highest in the Club med resort rankings, and will offer 343 rooms.
Even more accommodations are planned over the next few years – 20,000 hotel rooms, to be exact. Additional rooms will debut over the next years throughout Punta Cana, Bayahibe, Puerto Plata, Samaná and Santo Domingo. This number will add to the current 69,000 hotel rooms available in the country, said the Dominican Republic Ministry of Tourism.
In 2017, a record 837,000 Canadians visited the DR and the numbers show no signs of wavering in 2018. In January and February of this tour, a total of 1,126,776 international tourists were reported, a 4% year-over-year increase from the same two months in 2017. Of this number, 60% were from North America, 25% from Europe, 12% from south America and 2.5 from Central America and the Caribbean.
North American travellers grew by 5.3% when compared to the same period in 2017, with the majority travelling from Canada and the U.S.
In 2017, cruise arrivals to Puerto Plata exceeded 1.46 million, the highest on record, according to the Ministry of Tourism Cruise Department.
Minister of tourism Francisco Javier Garciá highlighted the country’s impressive tourism numbers at the International Tourism Fair in Berlin (ITB). He said the tourism sector is steadily increasing and as a result, the country opened 8,400 new hotel rooms over the past year, with another 15,000 under construction.
