(CNN)The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is casting off liquor dispensers from guest room minibars at its motel in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, the overall supervisor of the inn, instructed CNN.
Hard Rock Hotel and Casino decided ultimate week to do away with the liquor dispensers and hopes to “offer more tranquility for guests,” GM Erica Lopez stated. The decision to do away with the dispensers turned into made independently and now not due to the two deaths that happened on the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at Punta Cana, Lopez delivered. Instead, the decision follows a series of American traveler deaths within the Dominican Republic, some of which may additionally have involved liquor.
At least 10 American tourists have died at some point or after remains within the Dominican Republic over the last yr, in step with records from the State Department, family members, and the inns worried. But officers in the Dominican Republic and the United States have no longer said the deaths are connected. A US State Department official said Friday there had not been a weird spike in suggested deaths from the Dominican Republic. The State Department has not issued a travel caution approximately journeys to us unique to those deaths.
The Dominican Republic’s top tourism legitimate also downplayed what he referred to as “exaggerated” reviews about the deaths.
“It’s now not true that there was an avalanche of American vacationer’s loss of life in our country, and it’s no longer really that we’ve got mysterious deaths,” Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia informed newshounds.
Two deaths at the Hard Rock Hotel
Two of the deaths took place at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana. In line with his widow, Dawn McCoy, David Harrison, forty-five, of Brandywine, Maryland, died at the inn in July 2018. They were celebrating an anniversary, and she or he said her husband back from a snorkeling excursion in the future in advance, and he said he wasn’t feeling properly. Early the next morning, she stated that he changed into sweating and could not arise earlier than he died. Local authorities indexed the reason for death as a coronary heart assault and pulmonary edema. Robert Wallace, a 67-year-old resident of Turlock, California, died after turning into unwell at the hotel on April 12, the family advised CNN affiliate KTXL. Tommy Tickenhoff, his son-in-regulation, advised the station that Wallace has become sick after consuming scotch from a minibar.
Three different traveler deaths came about on the Grand Bahia Principe motel in La Romana. Samples were taken from at least one minibar there are being examined by way of the FBI as part of the agency’s collaboration with the Dominican Republic government; Ministry of Health spokesman Carlos Suero stated the remaining week. Suero introduced that an in-depth collection of samples is taken with the aid of the Dominican government while a person dies in a hotel room. Minibars are tested for microorganisms, and water from showers and sinks are tested, he said. The FBI is assisting with the toxicology exams of three of the nine Americans who’ve died in the Dominican Republic inside the beyond 12 months, he stated.
Tourism final 12 months represented more than 17% of an economy’s economy, in step with the World Travel & Tourism Council. And approximately 6.5 million travelers visited the Dominican Republic last yr, more than any other Caribbean country, in line with the Caribbean Tourism Organization. The United States accounted for 2.2 million of those tourists — greater than some other usa within the region.
