Tourism in the Dominican Republic set yet another record last month, with a total of 519,349 tourist arrivals. 

Fo the year, the country has reported 4.263 million tourist arrivals, according to Tourism minister David Collado. 

The November total was a 197 percent improvement over November 2020, and, more crucially, a 12 percent improvement over the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. 

“Every time this process of our tourism recovery is more solid and more evident,” Collado said.

Collado said he predicted that the country’s tourism performance for the remainder of the year would be “formidable.”

Punta Cana continues to be the country’s primary tourism hub, accounting for 53 percent of visitor arrivals last month — itself a 16 percent jump over November 2019. 

Collado said all of the country’s major airports: Punta Cana, Santo Domingo and Santiago, have all recovered their pre-pandemic performance. 

The country, which had a unique, randomized testing protocols for arriving passengers throughout much of the pandemic, has benefited of late from the loosening of foreign restrictions, most notably in Canada — long a top source market for the country and now beginning to recover. 

In July, for example, just 1,000 Canadians came to the Dominican Republic; in November, that number climbed to more than 40,000. 

In other words, the Dominican Republic remains the Caribbean’s highest-volume tourism destination — and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. 

— CJ