According to the Hilton.com report, Puerto Rican families are seeking more stays on the island than abroad
In the coming days, hundreds of local tourists will arrive at various hotels and guesthouses in the country to rest and in turn celebrate the Easter week after opting for domestic tourism instead of visiting other off-island destinations.
This was demonstrated in the hotel brand Hilton’s latest report, which detailed that families from Puerto Rico in the past 12 months searched on its website Hilton.com for stays of four nights or more for the Easter weekend in Puerto Rico. According to the report, the top five favorite destinations for Puerto Ricans to celebrate Semana Mayor are San Juan, New York, Ponce, Miami and Madrid, in that order.
This trend is also confirmed by the country’s hotels and inns, which have admitted that a significant percentage of their guests are Puerto Ricans during the Easter holidays. A few days before the start of Holy Week, the occupancy of hotels on the island averages 90%.
The fact that Puerto Ricans choose the island as a vacation destination has a favorable economic impact for the country, according to economists consulted by The News Journal.
“The spending generated by domestic tourists who choose to stay in Puerto Rico is clearly positive for the country’s economic activity, as small businesses (hotels, inns, restaurants, among others) continue to benefit from the growth process that is taking place observed especially in the accommodation sector in the last two years. The official statistics of the tourism industry to date are positive,” said economist Leslie Adams.
“The fact that local tourism, domestic tourism is growing or picking up from this Easter week is definitely a positive thing,” Adames added.
For the economist, the places that will benefit the most during the period in which domestic tourists vacation on the island will be restaurants, inns, hotels, Airbnb, cafes, carriers and other sectors.
“For example, you’re going to Rincón this weekend, and in addition to wanting to eat at the hotel you’re staying at, you’ll want to make two or three reservations at the restaurant there in Rincón. In other words, these restaurants will benefit from your stay there. Likewise, businesses in the municipalities surrounding Rincón could benefit from the domestic tourism activity generated by this type of activity,” Adames said.
According to economist Adrian Allos, domestic tourists who stay in Puerto Rico on vacation tend to spend a little more than when they normally stay at home.
“The people who will benefit the most are those who have short-term rentals (Airbnb) and restaurants. They’re the ones who will benefit in the end, because if you’re on vacation, you don’t usually go on vacation to stay home and cook, go out, have fun. All of these types of spending and other entertainment-related issues are the areas that ultimately benefit,” Alos commented.
The economist defined as positive the economic effect, which is expected to occur at the end of the Easter week.
Economist José Caraballo Cueto, however, has a different opinion, calling the economic impact of the spending that tourists will make on that date neutral.
“At the level of Puerto Rico, really, if it’s domestic tourism, that’s money that instead of being spent in San Juan, it’s going to be spent in another municipality. So it won’t be a new impact,” Caraballo Cueto said.
“On a macro level, when you look at Puerto Rico as a whole, it’s a change in the level of consumption, there’s no new consumption unless tourists come from abroad, which is new consumption, but if I stop going to the movies, going to a restaurant to go to the parador, well, I change the same consumption, the same amount of consumption, but with another activity,” said the economist.
“Sometimes I see the government pulling out numbers like this, trying to say there’s something new, there’s new economic activity, when there really isn’t. I invite you to really see what’s new when you add and subtract the balance,” said Caraballo Cueto.
