The island knows as Hispaniola located in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean; The Dominican Republic is the Focus of First UNWTO Tourism Investment Guide.
UNWTO- “The World Tourism Organisation” has launched the first in a series of tourism investment guidelines focused on a specific country. Developed alongside the Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic and the national Export and Investment Center (PRODOMINICANA), the new guide provides key insights for investors, with the aim of boosting foreign direct investment in the Caribbean destination. Launched against the backdrop of the FITUR tourism trade fair in Madrid, the Investment Guidelines represent a comprehensive tool for parties interested in FDI opportunities. It aims to attract and promote and retain investment in sustainable tourism initiatives in the Dominican Republic, including those that provide local jobs and build greater resilience across the sector. The guide highlights the potential of closer public private collaboration and makes clear the importance of directing investments towards building new tourism business models centres on innovation and sustainability.
An example of how the Dominican Republic embraces sustainable tourism:
The Dominican Republic, one of the world’s top tourist destinations, decided to act. To set the country’s tourism sector on a path of sustainability, the government has pledged to reduce marine and land-based pollution, cut the consumption of materials, and diminish waste arising from tourism. The new tourism plan, developed in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme, includes ways to measure and reduce food waste, increase energy efficiency, and promote the use of renewable energy in hotels and other accommodation options. It builds on two years of research, data collection and analysis, which helped identify hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions and low efficiency in the use of natural resources in hotel value chains. International travel was not part of the analysis. The resulting Roadmap for Low Carbon and Resource Efficient accommodation including established hotels and future new real estate projects in the Dominican Republic was launched by UN Environment in May 2019, in Punta Cana. The event was attended by seventy-five representatives from the tourism sector. The roadmap sets five targets for the accommodation sector in the Dominican Republic: to reduce by 25 per cent greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (from a 2020 baseline), reduce food waste by half, a 25 per cent of reduction in non-renewable energy use, the complete elimination of single-use plastics and the uptake of a sustainability certification for hotels. “This roadmap would not have been possible without strong cooperation between the public and the private sector,” says the Director of the Sustainable Production and Consumption Department in the Ministry of Environment
and Natural Resources. “It’s the first time they have collaborated to establish clear targets to achieve sustainable development for the tourism sector.”
As the UNWTO guide notes, the Dominican Republic represents one of the most competitive opportunities for investors for a number of reasons, excellent geographic location, solid legal framework, economic stability, and modern infrastructure. Leading investment destination According to data compiled by UNWTO and FDI Markets of the Financial Times, some twenty-six tourism projects in the Dominican Republic received about US$5.7 billion in tourism greenfield investments between 2016 and 2020. At the same time, the country has experienced an annual rate of growth in GDP of around 5% for the past 25 years, double the regional average. Over recent years, the Government of the Dominican Republic has worked to further attract FDI, including through the restructuring of free trade zones, incentives for investment in tourism and the signing of DR-CAFTA. (Dominican Republic Central America Free Trade Agreement). In 2021, the economy of the Dominican Republic recovered and reached pre-pandemic levels of growth. Notably, around 38% of this recovery was the product of the tourism sector. According to figures from the Ministry of Tourism (MITUR), as of December 2021, around 300,000 jobs were secured by the recovery of tourism, the result of the Responsible Tourism Recovery Plan led by the President of the Republic, The Plan, which saw tourism workers in The Dominican Republic vaccinated as early as possible against Covid19 allowed the country to be among the first global destinations to reopen its borders.
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Source: UNWTO.ORG
Source: UNEP.ORG