Frank Rainieri: Punta Cana reigns supreme in tourism

Santo Domingo.- Businessman and founder of Grupo Puntacana, Frank Rainieri Marranzini, said that the company is “moving slowly but surely” and has become the largest tourist destination in the insular Caribbean and the second largest in all of Latin America.

During the XVIII Breakfast-Conference of the radio stations ABC Radio and Vida FM, Rainieri added that vision, perseverance and work are the keys to his life, and announced that together with the Punta Cana International Airport they are developing a free zone project of about 93,800 square meters.

He also added that it will be an air logistics center for handling domestic and international cargo, which will have a center for the maintenance, repair and refurbishment of commercial aircraft with the capacity to simultaneously serve eight aircraft. “This great complex offers the Verón community 19,300 additional jobs, of which a large percentage will be technical personnel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” explained the businessman.

With this, he said, they seek to fundamentally change the professional profile of the workforce and society of Verón. “We already managed to turn farmers from 50 years ago into hoteliers and now we will turn workers into specialists in the sector.”

Rainieri also announced that “an initiative that is very close to my heart” is the creation of the Centro Cultural Raineri Marranzini, a space that will open its doors in late 2025 in the Punta Cana Village. With this, the eastern region will be endowed with an exhibition and community complex “dedicated not only to promoting Dominicanness, but also to understanding it.”

Referring to tourism, he mentioned that its growth has been unstoppable despite world crises such as the Covid-19 in 2020 and the current war between Russia and Ukraine. He recalled that in previous decades tourism did not play any role in the Dominican Republic and it was in the early 70s when it began to generate interest.

He added that in the north of the country, Samaná will soon have two cruise ports and that the number of rooms will also increase in the northern part of the peninsula. In the south, he said, Pedernales will enter the world map of tourism. He highlighted that in Baní the development of Puntarena and other projects continues, and mentioned that the construction of a cruise terminal will begin in Barahona.

He said that in the interior of the country, such as Santiago, Jarabacoa and Constanza, important tourist niches have begun to be created. He stated that the city of Santo Domingo is in the process of renovation and will become a great tourist destination.

“In a few years the whole country will be a tourist destination, this has not been easy and keeping it at the top will require a lot of vision, work and support from different sectors of life,” said the businessman, who also said that the Dominican tourism industry has had a group of persevering, hardworking and unattainable men and women who believed in the tourism industry and will continue their work against all odds.

In the case of Grupo Puntacana, he explained that they have collaborators from all the provinces of the country, “of which we have the least is from Santiago Rodríguez and there are 24 collaborators.”

Rainieri spoke about the contributions made by various areas of the country, such as “the trucks from Constanza full of vegetables and fruits that arrive three days a week to supply the hotels in the area; the chickens, eggs and pigs from Moca; the peppers from Baní, the bananas from Barahona and the fish from Pedernales are the main suppliers of those products in Punta Cana.”

He recalled that the Grupo Puntacana has developed models that include social and environmental responsibility as part of its operations and that since the 1980s, in the environmental aspect, they have started water recycling projects, which to date almost all the hotels in the area are implementing.