The Dominican Republic government and private-sector tourism stakeholders are working together to speed up the tourism recovery process, with the goal of ensuring all of the country’s hotels are operating by December, said the president of the country’s main hotel association.
The Association of Hotels and Tourism of the Dominican Republic (Asonahores) has held several meetings with David Collado, the country’s new tourism minister, to develop “a schedule of visits to tourist areas,” and has contributed to designing the country’s recently announced tourism recovery plan, said Paola Rainieri de Díaz, Asonahores’ president, in a Resumen Turismo report.
Rainieri de Diaz said only eight percent of Dominican Republic hotels are open “because the past administration did not approve the security protocols on time and they could not be validated internationally by the airlines and tour operators,” she said.
Collado was named tourism minister in July by Luis Rodolfo Abinader, who was elected to a four-year term as the Dominican Republic’s president on July 5. “We have raised the real needs of the tourism sector and the government has been very creative in designing new options and solutions,” Rainieri de Diaz added. “We hope that by December [hotels] will all be open.”
She said isolation centers have been established for travelers who display possible COVID-19 symptoms. Officials will also utilize “a hospital network with internationally recognized clinics,” said Rainieri de Diaz, who added that COVID-19 protocols and “necessary sanitary measures” are being applied at hotels.
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