For the fourth month, the number of tourist arrivals in the Dominican Republic decreased, recording the largest drop of the year in October with just 372,205 visitors, 10.3% below the 414,982 tourists that arrived in October 2018.
The data, published by the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, revealed that the significant increase in non-resident Dominicans visiting the country was not enough to offset the fall. While visits by nationals living abroad rose by 21.38% compared to October last year, foreign arrivals decreased by 16.10%.
The biggest setback was in the number of US tourists. During October, a total of 78,672 Americans arrived in the Dominican Republic, which meant a 32.1% drop over the 115,984 Americans that visited the country in October of last year.
The negative image that Dominican tourism has had since last June has affected the arrival of American visitors the most, such as the news of US tourist deaths that occurred while visitors spent their holidays in the country. This situation has resulted in a cumulative 5.4% drop in arrivals of US visitors between January and October over the same period of 2018.
Francisco Javier García, Minister of Tourism, said that they were developing a repositioning campaign in the US market that already showed results.
“The events that happened in the past are situations that are being overcome,” said the head of the tourism department.
Although Garcia emphasized the good results that have been obtained, the impact that these past events have had on the country’s image has been wide. In the first 10 months of this year, the number of tourists reached 5,359,903, which means 64,496 fewer visitors than last year, when the country recorded 5,424,399 tourists between January and October. In percentage, it is a 1.19% decrease between those two periods.
As expected, this has caused the average daily expenditure per tourist to decrease in the third quarter. The Central Bank of the Dominican Republic reported that daily expenditure between July and September was US$133.60, which represents a 1.7% drop over the $135.91 average daily expenditure.