Packaged Vacations: Tourism Development in the Spanish Caribbean

9. Punta Cana

9 Punta Cana To a degree unmatched in the rest of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the Dominican Republic packaged its tourism offering in the post–World War II era in a predominately urban setting. To a large extent, the urban orientation of Dominican tourism reflected dictator Rafael Trujillo’s desire to showcase Santo Domingo, or his Ciudad Trujillo. Trujillo’s efforts to promote tourism consisted mainly of luxury hotel development and hosting international fairs.1 Such a combination created a strange dichotomy, particularly as decentralized tourism began to emerge around the Caribbean. Hotels such as the Intercontinental Embajador (opened in 1956) created a splash for a couple of years, and then tourism would begin to ebb.2 Ironically, Santo Domingo boasted some of the Caribbean’s finest hotels, but lacked the types of attractions and infrastructure that jet-set tourists were growing accustomed to in the 1950s and 1960s in places like Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Tour guides gushed about the “modernity” of Trujillo’s city, but found it difficult to provide tourists with other options in the Dominican Republic besides Santo Domingo.3 Political instability in the early 1960s further stifled tourism development in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo’s heavy-handed dictatorial rule, followed by his assassination in 1963 and the subsequent political instability, practically killed the Dominican Republic’s tourist trade in the mid-1960s. As stability returned to the country in the late 1960s, the Joaquín Balaguer administration commissioned a series of assessments of tourism development in the Dominican Republic.4 In May 1968, the consulting firm of H. 156 The Global Caribbean Zinder and Associates, Inc., under contract with the Organization of American States (OAS), prepared a comprehensive assessment of the Dominican tourism industry and offered suggestions for immediate improvement.5 Later that year, in September 1968, UNESCO published A. Arespacochaga y Felipe’s report, República Dominicana: Desarrollo turístico. A Spanish tourism consultant of renown, Arespacochaga y Felipe had conducted a survey of tourism in Cartagena, Colombia, during the same year for UNESCO.6 His report on the Dominican Republic focused on the theoretical plausibility of tourism reversing the Dominican Republic’s balance of payments woes.7 He also identified and prioritized the most important decentralized locations for rapid tourism development in the country. Given the limited tourism development in the Dominican Republic, Zinder and Associates emphasized the importance of tapping into the significant wave of tourism development on the islands surrounding the Dominican Republic, stressing Puerto Rico in particular. “While little has been going on in the tourism field in the Dominican Republic,” the report noted at the outset, “tourism has grown by leaps and bounds in Puerto Rico, in the Virgin Islands, and in Jamaica.”8 In an effort to take advantage of its proximity to millions of tourists, the Dominican Republic would need to promote favorable commercial air routes that would only minimally raise the total cost of a vacation for travelers in the Caribbean. Furthermore, given the economic vitality of Puerto Rico, promotion of the Dominican Republic there could yield additional Latin American tourist streams. Finally, Zinder and Associates recommended that Dominican authorities would also need to promote internal tourism to reduce international tourism by Dominican nationals, and the concomitant flight of currency abroad. “Some 80,000 to 100,000 Dominican citizens travel abroad each year,” the report observed, “as contrasted to about 45,000 foreign visitors who visit the Dominican Republic . By contrast, Puerto Rico got about 800,000 tourists.”9 In addition to stressing the need for a government-directed tourism organization with strong links to the business community, the report also illustrated ways in which Dominican officials and private investors could package tourism in more attractive colors for tourists.10 In 1968, the report observed, most of the “tourists” to the Dominican Republic were business professionals and Puerto Rican tourists. These visitors generally stayed in the Dominican Republic for less than a week and spent approximately $200 per person during their visits. Spatially, tourists remained concentrated in the capital, as “the great bulk of tourists and visitors do not get out of the Santo Domingo area.”11 Initially, this would work to the benefit of a rapid tourism development program, as transportation bottlenecks and infra- 157 Punta Cana structure limitations elsewhere made the capital city almost a mandatory destination. “For all practical purposes, it’s an enforced entry point,” Zinder and Associates noted...