(task) Maria deals $191-million blow to Dominica’s tourism industry – Dominica News Online

Dominica Resilience System

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economy, tourism, CRS - DRS - economy
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> http://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/tourism-publicity/maria-deals-191-million-blow-to-dominicas-tourism-industry/ <http://dominicanewsonline.com/news/homepage/news/tourism-publicity/maria-deals-191-million-blow-to-dominicas-tourism-industry/>
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> Maria deals $191-million blow to Dominica’s tourism industry
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> A hotel after Hurricane Maria
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> Dominica’s tourism industry received a staggering blow from Hurricane Maria and total losses could run to over $190-million, Director of Tourism, Colin Piper has said.
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> He said at a press conference on Monday that presently only 27 percent of hotel rooms are open to the market.
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> He pointed out that the Discover Dominica Authority has made an assessment of the majority of hotel rooms on the island and recovery is going to be slow.
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> “Just to give you some information on working with the folks from the world bank, we have assessed damages in the amount of EC$54-million for the tourism industry and losses in the amount of $191-million,” he stated.
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> Piper pointed out that the island’s hotel room stock suffered the heaviest damages.
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> “Currently we have 243 rooms that are currently serving the market,” he noted. “That is about 27 percent of pre-Maria room stock.”
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> He said before Maria, there were about 909 rooms and about 39 percent or 358 rooms were severely damaged “and as such we do not feel they will be back servicing clients before 12 months.”
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> “And we also have about 34 percent or 308 of the rooms that we think will come back little by little and our estimation is that about ten percent of that room stock will come back on a monthly basis starting in December,” he stated. “So currently we have 243, we anticipate of the 308, say 30 come back on a monthly basis through September that will take us to 550 rooms, if all goes well.”
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> Despite the grim statistics, Piper has identified January 1, 2018, as a milestone for the island to be in a state of readiness for the cruise ship season.
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> He said the authorities thought the season was lost but based on the pace of some of the site rehabilitation and some of the work the tourism ministry is doing, it is all a go.
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> “We are communicating that to all the stakeholders,” Piper stated. “The cruise sector amounts to about $25-million in spend and so of the losses, the $191-million that I mentioned, cruise would be about $25-million of that.”
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> He revealed that the tourism service sector which includes tour operators, vendors, other support services like taxis and the like have suffered about $4.3-million in damages.
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> Piper noted that building back the tourism sector is going to cost some $70-million.
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> “And so when we look at the total recovery, damages, building back better, rebuilding according to climate change resiliency codes and the like, we anticipate it will be upwards of EC$70-million,” he said.