The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is eliminating liquor dispensers from visitor room minibars at its hotel in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, the overall supervisor of the hotel instructed CNN.
Hard Rock Hotel and Casino decided final week to take away the liquor dispensers and hopes to “offer more tranquility for visitors,” GM Erica Lopez said. The decision to eliminate the dispensers turned into made independently and not due to the two deaths that came about on the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at Punta Cana, Lopez introduced.
The selection follows a sequence of American tourist deaths within the Dominican Republic, a number of which may have concerned liquor.
At least 10 American travelers have died throughout or after remains within the Dominican Republic during the last year, in keeping with records from the State Department, family members and the lodges concerned.
But officers inside the Dominican Republic and America have not stated the deaths are related. A US State Department legit stated Friday there has no longer been a peculiar spike in reported deaths from the Dominican Republic, and the State Department has no longer issued a tour caution about trips to the united states of America unique to these deaths.
The Dominican Republic’s pinnacle tourism respectable additionally downplayed what he known as “exaggerated” reviews approximately the deaths.
“It’s not actual that there has been an avalanche of American travelers demise in our use, and it’s no longer proper that we’ve mysterious deaths,” Tourism Minister Francisco Javier Garcia told newshounds.
Two deaths at the Hard Rock Hotel
Two of the deaths took place at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana.
David Harrison, 45, of Brandywine, Maryland, died at the hotel in July 2018, in step with his widow, Dawn McCoy. They had been celebrating an anniversary, and she or he stated her husband back from a snorkeling excursion sooner or later earlier and he said he wasn’t feeling nice.
Early the subsequent morning, she said, he changed into sweating and unable to get up earlier than he died. The local government listed the purpose of demise as a heart attack and pulmonary edema.
Robert Wallace, a 67-yr-antique resident of Turlock, California, died after becoming unwell on the resort April 12, spouse and children advised CNN associate KTXL. Tommy Tickenhoff, his son-in-regulation, told the station that Wallace has become unwell after ingesting scotch from a minibar.
Three different visitor deaths occurred at the Grand Bahia Principe resort in La Romana. Samples were taken from at the least one minibar there are being examined by way of the FBI as a part of the business enterprise’s collaboration with Dominican Republic government, Ministry of Health spokesman Carlos Suero stated ultimate week.
Suero introduced that an intensive collection of samples is taken with the aid of the Dominican government while someone dies in a resort room. Minibars are examined for bacteria and water from showers and sinks are examined, he stated.
The FBI is supporting with the toxicology tests of three of the 9 Americans who’ve died inside the Dominican Republic inside the past yr, he said.
Tourism closing 12 months represented extra than 17% of u . S .’s economic system, in step with the World Travel & Tourism Council.
And approximately 6. Five million tourists visited the Dominican Republic ultimate yr, extra than any other Caribbean country, in keeping with the Caribbean Tourism Organization. The United States accounted for two.2 million of those vacationers — greater than another united states of America inside the vicinity.
