Piñero: Dominican Republic, Cancún, and Jamaica lead the tourism recovery
The Dominican Republic, Cancún, and Jamaica are the three destinations that lead the tourist recovery in the Caribbean, and the effects of this recovery will be more visible in the winter season that begins next November, according to Encarna Piñero, CEO of Grupo Piñero.
Piñero spoke at the WTTC World Tourism Summit, held in Cancun, Mexico, which 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 is managing the recovery very well in the short term, mobilizing vaccines for employees in the sector. After the good work of the Dominican Republic, Cancun and Jamaica rebounded.
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 mass vaccination in the United States and the second in Europe.
“This is going to generate a wave of confidence in the entire sector, in all tourism, and the moment there is a higher percentage of vaccination in Europe, the influx to the Caribbean will be noticed”, she assured.
Piñero said that they are improving and remain that when the United States finishes vaccination in July there will be an increase in reservations to all Caribbean destinations because they are the preferred destinations for North Americans.
However, although there is optimism and a slow recovery, Encarna Piñero recognizes that there is a lot of caution among hotel businessmen because at this time the objective of companies is no longer to seek profits but to maintain the sustainability of the companies and the stability of their workers.
“We will not open all the hotels. We will be at 70% compared to 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 15,000 rooms in fifteen days and then You ask yourself what it is for, two months, three months, fifteen thousand employees, what do we do”, she added.
As part of that orderly restructuring that they were set to perform, they found that segments such as golf and housing in tourist areas with high capital gains are experiencing an unexpected boom.
“Now we are focused on helping each business have its own rhythm, the real state and golf has done better than the hotels, we have helped them have a growth rhythm, the residential part has surprised us and that is because a lot of people now want to live outside the big cities, there is a spectacular increase in sales”, she commented.