How did Punta Cana become so popular?

Punta Cana, located on the east coast of the Dominican Republic, has become internationally recognized as a beautiful tropical vacation paradise with luxurious, eco-chic and affordable accommodations. In fact, Punta Cana has now become the # 1 tourist destination in the entire Caribbean, and this amazing transformation has occurred in just 28 years! This news has been published in many of the popular travel magazines and websites. I want you to know that this statistic is based on REAL data, not just hype. The statistics are compiled by the Caribbean Tourism Organization, a non-profit organization that closely tracks 29 countries in the Caribbean region.

Next, I will discuss this data in more detail. My discussion will focus on the data released in 2010, as the Caribbean Tourism Organization has not yet released the statistics for December 2011, so there is no complete data set for that year yet. However, if you study the data available for the first 11 months of 2011, the overall trends remain the same.

The Dominican Republic received more airport arrivals from non-residents than any other Caribbean country, easily surpassing Cuba, the second most popular tourist destination. The following is a quick reference list so you can see the top 10 Caribbean destinations along with the total reported number of non-resident airport arrivals:

1. Dominican Republic – 4,124,543

2. Cuba – 2,531,745

3. Cancun Mexico – 2,106,485

4 Jamaica – 1,921,678

5.Puerto Rico – 1,369,814

6. Bahamas – 1,368,053

7. Aruba – 825,451

8. The US Virgin Islands – 691,194

9. Martinique – 476,492

10. San Martin – 443,136

Now, let’s break these statistics down even further into travel in Europe, travel in the United States, and travel in Canada. Europeans overwhelmingly choose the Dominican Republic as their favorite vacation spot in the Caribbean. His next favorite is Cuba. The United States has a close 4-way race between Cancun, Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Cancun beats the other 3, but the Dominican Republic gained 6.8% in just one year and this trend continues. Punta Cana is now the No. 1 destination within the Dominican Republic for Americans, replacing Puerto Plata on the north coast, which used to be No. 1. Canadians also seem to like the Dominican Republic a lot, especially Punta Cana, and the They choose it as their second favorite vacation spot in the Caribbean after Cuba. Please note that residents of the United States cannot travel to Cuba.

So, with this compelling data in mind, let me ask:

How did Punta Cana become so popular?

With many popular tourist destinations, it would be difficult to pinpoint one specific thing that caused the area to skyrocket in popularity. Not so with Punta Cana. On the coast of Punta Cana, which stretches for some 39 miles from Bavaro in the north to Cap Cana in the south, there is an easily identifiable event that took place in 1984 that literally changed everything and completely transformed this region in the mega-popular tourist area. destiny that is today.

Is your curiosity already piqued? Keep reading …

Punta Cana is absolutely beautiful. It offers wide beaches of silky white sand with a bright and warm blue sea along its coast. It is so tempting that it attracts you; some say it even “seduces” you. When you add to that the thick grove of coconut trees swaying in the tropical breeze along the entire coast of this region, you have the iconic Caribbean paradise seen in the postcards sent to those who were not lucky enough to continue. the trip but you surely wish you had.

However, before 1984 few people really knew about this tropical gem. It remained largely undiscovered by most world travelers until the construction of the Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ). In Spanish, the official language of the Dominican Republic, this international airport is called “Punta Cana International Airport”.

You see, no matter how spectacular a place is, if you don’t have a convenient and inexpensive way to get to the area, many people won’t see it. Before the Punta Cana International Airport was built, the small runway that had been built in 1971 could not handle the large jet planes. Also, to get there from another country, you had to fly to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and then endure a 4-hour bumpy bus or taxi ride to Punta Cana. The unpaved road was narrow and crowded. of giant potholes. The road was also washed out in heavy rain and motorized vehicles were sometimes stopped by horse traffic, making the pace of weary travelers wanting to get to their hotel miserable.

PUJ air traffic has grown by leaps and bounds and is on its way this year (2012) to serve more than 4 million people! It now receives much more traffic than the next busiest airport in the capital Santo Dominigo. There is no other private airport in the world that comes close to this degree of business success.

People come to Punta Cana from all over the world now. The international airlines that operate at Punta Cana Airport are Air Canada, AirTran, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental, Delta, JetBlue, KLM, Spirit, United, US Airways and Westjet. The recently defunct USA 300 (as of Jan 30, 2012) was established by Apple Vacations and also served PUJ for a long time. Canadian charter airlines to Punta Cana airport include Air Transat, Sunwig, Skyservice, and Canjet. They run during cold and gloomy Canadian winters.

So an area that started with a very humble beginning some 4 decades ago now commonly provides beds for over 70,000 people at a time. Punta Cana has definitely established itself as one of the best places for world travelers to go. And … there is no end in sight for the growth of this area. Punta Cana’s roughly 39-mile coastline has essentially been a “gold rush” for major hotel corporations, especially Spanish-owned ones, since the area’s international airport opened. Classy high-rise resorts, perfectly positioned to take advantage of the view, have sprung up almost overnight. The infrastructure has also vastly improved as money has come in for large projects.

Europeans and Canadians seemed to have “discovered” Punta Cana before the Americans. Yet over the past 10-15 years, Americans have caught up quickly. In fact, this has happened at such a rapid rate that entire resorts have been built to specifically cater to American Americans, as the customs of Europeans and Americans sometimes clash a bit within the resorts, although some Americans prefer the European environment.

Americans and Canadians in the Eastern Standard Time Zone can depart on a direct flight in the morning and arrive in Punta Cana at noon with no jet lag as the time zones are the same except during daylight saving time when it is only one hour. different. Even a trip from the west coast of the United States or Canada is a relatively easy trip when compared to other equally exotic destinations.

The Punta Cana Airport also fits in very well with the Dominican landscape and makes a good first impression when tourists enter the country. It has an open-air design with a picturesque thatched roof made from palm fronds. All the materials used to build the airport were brought in from local sources, including palm, local wood, and native coral. This was a very intentional effort by Frank Rainieri and the other investors in Grupo Punta Cana who financed the airport privately. Not having sufficient funds for a project of this magnitude, Frank Rainieri approached a Dominican architecture student at Pratt University. He agreed to do it free of charge to establish a name for himself. Since then he has become quite famous and has been well paid for other projects in the Dominican Republic.

Originally, Grupo Punta Cana tried to get the government of the Dominican Republic to finance, or at least partially finance, the construction of the international airport, but after 8 years they realized that they had to finance it privately on their own. They should be given credit for their vision and persistence because a private airport of this magnitude has never been built before. However, they had much-needed approval and cooperation from the government of the Dominican Republic or the project would never have taken off.

There you have it. The tourist success of the Punta Cana coast depended on one thing: building an international airport capable of providing tourists with easy and inexpensive access to this beautiful paradise. It took incredible vision and perseverance.