Cancún, Dominican Republic and Jamaica, drivers of Caribbean tourism recovery

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Mexico’s Cancun, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica are the three destinations leading the tourism recovery in the Caribbean.

The effects of this recovery will be more visible in the winter season starting next November, according to Encarna Piñero, CEO of the Piñero Group, who participated this Monday in the WTTC World Tourism Summit, which is being held in Cancún and brings together more than 600 representatives of the private and public tourism sector from 20 countries.

“The Dominican Republic is doing very well; the new government manages very well in the short term recovery, mobilizing vaccines to employees in the sector. After the good performance of the Dominican Republic, Cancun and Jamaica rebounded, which although initially had a drop, now is one of the best performers; there is no regular behavior of the three destinations, but I think Cancun is the one that will rebound the most,” added Encarna Piñero.

For the CEO of Grupo Piñero, the global tourism industry will experience two key moments for recovery in the coming months, the first due to the massive vaccination in the United States and the second in Europe.

“This will generate a wave of confidence in the entire sector, in all tourism, and the moment that in Europe there is a higher percentage of vaccination, the influx to the Caribbean will be noticeable,” he said.

However, although there is optimism and slow recovery, Encarna Piñero recognizes that there is a lot of caution among hotel business people because its objective is no longer to seek profits but to maintain the companies’ sustainability the stability of their workers.

“We will not open all the hotels. We will be at 70% for 2019. With all this, we have changed the scale of values; we were not prepared to close, we are prepared to open and manage, but we had to close in fifteen days 15,000 rooms, and then you ask yourself this for how much is it, two months, three months, fifteen thousand employees, what do we do?”, he added.

“Now we are focused on helping each business to have its rhythm, the real estate and golf have been doing better than the hotels, we have helped them to have a rhythm of growth, the residential part has surprised us, and that is because many people now want to live outside the big cities, there is a spectacular increase in sales,” he commented.

Spain will be ready for the summer

Spain will be ready in June to use the European digital green certificate and tell all the tourists in the world that they can revisit the country, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Fernando Valdés, announced on Monday event. Valdés welcomed the “wonderful” news yesterday that vaccinated U.S. tourists will be able to enter the European Union.

The 20th WTTC Summit, considered the first major event of the tourism sector this year, is being held under the theme “Uniting the World for Recovery”.

WTTC President and CEO Gloria Guevara said that the “most influential leaders from both the public and private sectors” meet face-to-face for the first time in nearly a year as they begin “a new chapter” in tourism’s post-pandemic recovery.