LatinNews Daily - 28 April 2023

* The Dominican Republic’s tourism minister, David Collado, has announced a new strategy aimed at making the country a more environmentally friendly tourism destination. Speaking at the 14^th edition of the Dominican Annual Tourism Exchange (DATE), a leading tourism event, Collado said that as part of this, next month, the government would issue a resolution establishing that hotels must gradually phase out the use of plastic. He also highlighted a recent announcement by President Luis Abinader that universities would receive US$1m to research sargassum (brown seaweed) which is affecting coastal areas. This comes as the government recently boasted record tourism arrivals to the country. On 19 April Collado said 2.08m tourists arrived via air and 806,527 by cruise ship in the first quarter of 2023. He said that the total of 2.88m tourists was “unprecedented” for a first quarter. He added that the figure for those arriving by air was up 11% on 2019, up 190% on 2021 (due to the slump caused by the coronavirus [Covid-19] pandemic), and up by 21% on 2022. He said that March 2023 also produced record tourist visits, with 740,324 arriving via air, up 10% on March 2019 and 20% on March 2022, while the country received 280,247 cruise passengers, up from 134,070 March 2022. As regards the main source countries in March, 48.1% of tourists came from the US, followed by Canada (23.2%), Colombia (2.9%), France (2.6%), and Germany (2.5%).