Even amid the pandemic, the Dominican Republic’s tourism industry just posted its best-ever December. 

The news was revealed by Dominican Republic Tourism Minister David Collado in an end-of-year briefing. 

A total of 728,335 visitors came to the Dominican Republic last month, the a higher total even than the previous record in 2018, when about 650,000 tourists arrived in the country. 

“While other destinations continued with negative figures, we worked and surpassed ourselves in an historic way,” Collado said. “We managed to close with the best month of December in the history of tourism in the Dominican Republic.”

The Dominican Republic’s tourism hub accounted for about 50 percent of those arrivals, followed by Santo Domingo’s Las Americas airport, which accounted for about 26 percent. 

North American visitors continued to dominate the country’s arrival numbers, accounting for 61 percent of all visitors. 

The Dominican Republic also reported 165,609 cruise passengers in December, itself a 268 percent jump over November 2021.