Nearly a year after Hurricane Maria — and amid a tempest triggered by a presidential tweet — Puerto Rico is boosting its hotel room inventory by 25% or 3,800 new rooms. Extensive renovations over the past 12 months have opened the opportunity for resorts to add capacity.
Nearly 11,000 rooms were available for booking as of late summer, with more than 4,000 under renovation, according to Brad Dean, CEO of Discover Puerto Rico, which handles tourism marketing for the island. Several big resorts are scheduled to reopen in the fourth quarter or early next year, including the Gran Melia Hotel and the Caribe Hilton. “The product is being revamped, and this has been a major draw for visitors,” Dean says. The addition of new rooms will boost the island’s inventory to more than 18,000 rooms by next year.
Dean notes that May (the most recent data available) yielded positive results due to a second room-rate increase this year. Puerto Rico saw the largest ADR lift, at 22.4%, and the second-largest increase in RevPAR, at 33.9%.
Discover Puerto Rico developed a co-op program with hotels to bring travel agents and meeting planners to major tradeshows and other hospitality events. “We’re delivering the important message that Puerto Rico is open and ready for business,” he says.
Another initiative recently launched by Discover Puerto Rico, in time for the hurricane anniversary on September 20, highlights the progress that the island’s tourism industry has made, erase the images of devastation and chaos, and in its words, “#CoverTheProgress and share real-time Island imagery and the many milestones that have led the Island in one of the greatest comeback stories in tourism.”
According to the tourism group, investment in new hotel development totals US$1.9 billion and an additional 2,900 local jobs.