A garden of Eden to lure the U.S. tourist

Just a few hours from New York, hundreds of miles of beach front slope gently into the crystalline waters of the Caribbean. As children gambol on the fine sand, their parents play golf, tennis or just relax in the tropical sun. It’s a family holiday on another day in paradise in the Dominican Republic, one of the region’s premier tourist destinations.
And despite the recent downturn in the sector, resort operators and hoteliers in the Caribbean predict the good times will roll again.

FRANK RAINIERI President and CEO of Grupo Punta Cana

“Even following recent events, we saw a big increase in our numbers here,” says Frank Rainieri, the president and CEO of Grupo Punta Cana, which operates the resort of the same name on the Dominican Republic’s east coast. “Those numbers have been rising ever since we opened because the U.S. market is discovering the delights of Punta Cana.”
There is much to discover. Only five minutes from the nearby international airport, the 15,000-acre complex boasts a hotel, an international marina, an 18-hole golf course, restaurants, bars and facilities for such sports as tennis, horseback riding, scuba diving and snorkeling, fishing, windsurfing, water-skiing and more.
International figures such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Julio Iglesias and Oscar de la Renta own homes at the resort, but the group president is quick to stifle the notion that Punta Cana models itself as a jet-set getaway.

“It would be more accurate to say we’re a family destination where one can have a vacation without any kind of pretense. We don’t have a casino here and we hold church services every Saturday afternoon in one of the hotels. The idea is for our guests to feel right at home, to feel like they’re part of the family.”
Plans call for two more golf courses and a further two hotels at the resort. But with so much space and strict rules on the number of buildings per acre as well as the height of structures at the resort, there is little danger of guests feeling claustrophobic.

“We have so much respect for our property and its natural beauty, we even maintain a biodiversity laboratory in cooperation with Cornell University which operates as a research and education center,” Mr. Rainieri points out. “Not many other resorts in the Caribbean can say that.”
“Right now, Americans account for around 30 percent of our visitors. But we’d like to see that figure rise to some 50 percent,” he says. “And for New Yorkers, we’re the closest thing from home. They can be in a tropical paradise that others can only dream about in just three hours.”