BHD and Adoturd to measure sports tourism in the DR for the first time

Banco BHD and the Dominican Sports Tourism Association (Adoturd) announced the first research on sports tourism in the Dominican Republic, as reported by Arecoa. The study lands at a time when the country hosts golf, deep-sea fishing, baseball, surf and running events without an official figure grouping all those visitors together.

The partnership has a merit that goes beyond the data. When a bank sits down with a sector association to fund a study, it is because there is business they want to measure before lending against it. That is the clue. Adoturd groups organizers and operators who move teams, families and fans to Punta Cana, Casa de Campo, Puerto Plata or Samaná, and that flow is still only half-counted inside general arrival statistics.

The angle worth watching is fiscal. If the research manages to isolate how much a visitor attending a tournament spends, how many nights they sleep, how much they consume outside the hotel and how much of that spending stays in the provinces, the segment stops being a narrative and becomes an argument for public budget, promotion in source markets and incentives for investment in sports facilities. That is the real value of the project.