The President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona, presented this Monday at the World Economic Forum part of the strategy that the Government implemented to promote the turismo in the country and the bet that gave him results.
Abinaderwho spoke in the city of Davos during the conversation “Rethinking and Revitalizing Travel and Turismo”, Abinader expressed that when he came to power he found himself in the difficult situation of considering opening the economy through the sector turismo and for that marketing studies were carried out in the United States and Canada and ideas were discussed that later turned out to be of great impact.
“The important thing regarding turismo for our economy. I came to government in the midst of the pandemic, and we began the economic recovery, and 60 percent of the Dominican GDP comes from the turismo and around 20 percent of our employees”, contextualized the president.
“When we analyzed (what we were going to do) we said that our economy will never recover if we do not recover the turismo. So we had to balance health but at the same time open up the economy. And then we started doing focus groups and surveys in the United States and Canada and from those focus groups we knew that people had been in their houses for several months and they wanted to get out. And when we showed the photos with sea, sand and sun they said: “We want to go there”, but there was the fear of COVID”, he recounted.
Abinader He said that this raised another situation: “The problem was that people were afraid of getting sick if they traveled, so we created the only COVID insurance in the world that was free for anyone who came to the DR, so we got the trust of the people to fly to our country.”
One of the forum participants asked Abinader if this did not entail a high cost for the country, to which he replied “It had a cost, but it was a greater cost that they did not come. Furthermore, the insurance company was the Dominican public insurer. But I also have to tell you: do you know how many ended up using it? 0.7%. And we know that because each citizen had to take tests before leaving the country and returning to their origin.”
“At the same time we had one of the fastest vaccination programs in our world and we started by vaccinating hotel employees. And we can say that compared to our population we are the country in the world that recovered the fastest from COVID,” he said. Abinader.
He added: “There was a time when we were thinking whether to go for the immediate term or not plan for the future. So we decided to also open a new destination, which is flints. We decided to develop beautiful Pedernales,” he said.
The international situation
Abinader pointed out that even though the turismo recovered last year and December ended as the best December in the history of the turismo He has had to lead the country with adverse situations at the international level. “We had the best December of all time and then Omicron came, we got ahead and then the war (Ukraine-Russia) came, but then we continued our efforts in marketing and and now May will be the best May in our history,” he said. .
Regarding the future, the president said that there are reasons for concern but also for hope “There is concern but there is hope regarding regional tourist trips, we believe that you will not see many transatlantic flights, you will not see transpacific flights. Above all, from the Americans because they are going to travel less to Europe due to the concern they have regarding the world situation; but we are also financing our own Dominicans to visit the hotels. The turismo of Dominicans historically was 8% of all the turismo that was done but last year it rose to 30%, and Dominicans who live in the United States also arrived, who are almost two million people”; he said she.
