Playa Minitas, La Romana. The Dominican Republic is having another record tourism year.
More than 7.7 million people visited the country during the first seven months of 2026, the highest total ever recorded for the January-to-July period, according to new figures released by the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Tourism.
The country received 7,700,118 visitors from January through July, a 7 percent increase over the same period in 2025 and a 10.4 percent increase compared with 2024.
The gap with pre-pandemic tourism is even wider: visitor volume was 69.6 percent higher than during the first seven months of 2019.
Tourism Minister David Collado presented the latest figures during an Aug. 4 tourism briefing in Santo Domingo, continuing a series of monthly reports documenting the Dominican Republic’s sustained run of record visitor arrivals.
The total includes both overnight tourists arriving by air and cruise passengers, two businesses that have expanded rapidly across the country during the last several years.
Air arrivals accounted for most of the Dominican Republic’s tourism traffic from January through July.
The country received 5,885,259 tourists by air during the seven-month period.
Cruise ports added another 1,814,859 passengers, bringing the total to 7,700,118 visitors.
The numbers underscore the size of a tourism industry extending well beyond the resort concentration in Punta Cana. International arrivals are flowing through airports serving Santo Domingo, Santiago, Puerto Plata, La Romana and Samaná, while cruise ships are bringing passengers to ports in several parts of the country.
Punta Cana remains the center of the country’s resort business, with one of the Caribbean’s deepest collections of all-inclusive properties, golf resorts and luxury hotels. Santo Domingo has its own growing visitor base, driven by the Colonial Zone, restaurants, nightlife and a steadily expanding hotel inventory.
Puerto Plata has seen renewed hotel and cruise activity, while Samaná, La Romana and Santiago give the country additional tourism centers with very different visitor profiles.
The Dominican Republic welcomed 1,083,448 total visitors during July, up 2.9 percent from July 2025 and 6.4 percent from July 2024.
The country received 921,718 tourists by air in July, a 6.7 percent increase from the same month in 2025.
The air-arrival increase is especially significant during the Caribbean summer, when the Dominican Republic draws vacationers from the United States as well as visitors from Latin America, Canada and Europe.
The country has developed one of the region’s broadest mixes of source markets, with nonstop flights connecting Dominican airports to major cities across the Americas and Europe.
The United States supplied 48 percent of tourists arriving in July, far ahead of any other individual market.
Argentina and Colombia each contributed 6 percent, followed by Puerto Rico at 5 percent.
Mexico and the United Kingdom each accounted for 3 percent of arrivals, while Spain represented 2 percent.
The July numbers point to the Dominican Republic’s strong position in the American market, particularly for Punta Cana, where nonstop service reaches a long list of U.S. cities.
