The Dominican Republic is a Consolidated Tourist Destination in the Expansion Mode

Francisco Javier García spoke on Tuesday at the 12th Annual Meeting of Latin American Tourism Ministers and Business People as he prepares to represent the DR at Spain’s FITUR gathering in Madrid.

The Dominican Republic is currently a “mature” destination and is enriching its tourism offerings with the rapid development of emerging areas of great natural beauty…”

The Dominican Republic is currently a “mature” destination and is enriching its tourism offerings with the rapid development of emerging areas of great natural beauty such as Bávaro-Punta Cana, La Romana-Bayahibe and Samaná, said Tourism Minister Francisco Javier García,

The Dominican Minister made the comment at the 12th Annual Meeting of Latin American Tourism Ministers and Business People (CIMET) on the eve of the International Tourism Fair (FITUR) in Madrid.

In his speech, García stressed the development and impressive natural beauty of the tourism pole of Bávaro-Punta Cana which already has “nearly 50,000 hotel rooms making it one of the most consolidated in the country.”

“The second region that we consider to be emerging is also located in the Eastern zone and that is Romana-Bayahibe, an enclave with some 12,000 hotel rooms, tourism and cruise line ports and huge golf courses,” he said.

The minister also referred to Samaná as an emerging but outstanding enclave “in which the government has made an important investment in road construction on the Santo Domingo-Samaná highway thus cutting the trip between the two places from four-and-a-half hours down to around two hours.”

Calling on Colleagues

On another matter at hand, the Dominican Tourism Minister made a call to his colleagues to pay attention to the subject and treatment of tourism and its relation to the world economic crisis.

“I want to call attention to this because it is one thing when a particular sector is affected by the crisis and it is another when the sector itself is in crisis. Tourism is not in crisis; tourism can be affected by the crisis but they are two totally different concepts,” he said.

He said a crisis always has two effects: the real, objective effect and the psychological effect. The focus of the crisis, he said, can have a considerable psychological effect on consumers and tourism clients.

“If we incorrectly manage the effect this situation could produce in the tourism sector, we ourselves are going to plunge tourism into a crisis,” he cautioned.

At the same time he pointed out that the tourism sector has in the past survived other serious crises such as the spike in oil prices when it rose to $147 dollars a barrel, the sub-prime lending crisis in the United States, the North American financial crisis, the stock market crash and the world food production crisis.

“This is a sector that has demonstrated that it is creative, innovative and capable of taking the right decisions at the right moments,” he concluded.

Tourism Ministers from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Manuel Marrero and Francisco Javier García, at the CIMET in Madrid, Spain.

Francisco Javier García, Dominican Tourism Minister offering his point of view at the CIMET 2009 meeting that brought together Latin American Tourism Ministers and business people prior to the inauguration of FITUR.