The trickle-down economics of tourism...

Tourism provides lots of benefits, even if the hotels are mostly foreign owned. When a new hotel is built there are tons of people who benefit at the construction stage and once it is operating many Dominican companies supply these hotels providing more jobs all the way up and down the supply chain.

As for the jobs being menial jobs, that is true, but what's the alternative? no jobs at all? This is very typical of any developing country...what happens over time is that salaries start to rise and you will start to see more and more Dominicans in management positions. In addition what will happen is that the tourism industry in The DR currently dominated by low budget all inclusives will start going upscale (it is already happenning).

My personal opinion is that there's very little resentment towards tourist. Maybe hints of jealousy. In terms of whether this corrodes the family life, I would say there's some of that too, thus the thriving of the sankie culture. Tourist areas just naturally attract certain types of people...

My 2 cents...

Many hotels are dominican owned ex: amhsa hotel chains etc.
Locals get jobs working in hotels, jobs in construction phase, maintenance, food is bought locally for clients, liquor and other decoration and even despensible items. the tourists buy tours which employs dominicans. the dominicans also own many tour companies. The taxes the hotels have to pay to the government, the electric company make money, the water company get their share, the phone company get their take of the pie. The airlines serve the country and thus the airport get and tourism dept get their cut of the pie.
Now let me make this very clear, the foreigners are not the richest people in this country. The dominicans are. When I lived in puerto plata, I made lousy money working with foreigners. Now in santiago, I often make more money in 4 days here than I made in a month working in POP. I can charge whatever I like and the dominicans pay. I often make money in a day that an average dominican makes in a month. Look around you and see who own all the big companies in santo domingo, santiago? who own the tall elegant apartment buildings, the 100,000 dollar SUVs, the porche chayanne costing way over 100k dollars here. Do you know how much a landcruiser fully loaded cost here? Do you know how many SUVs we have in this tiny island? Who do you think drive them? Who own the banks the fererreterias, grocery stores cement companies, rum companies, beer companies, zona francas etc etc etc.
My friend, the foreigners don't own majority of the cream of the crop here, they are in a tiny percentage here.
AZB

Thanks to tourism, DR is the largest exporter of varilla and largest producer of Concrete in the Caribbean.

Berzin said:

How exactly does the DR and its' citizens benefit from tourism when...

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Perhaps the other side of that question would be. What exactly would happen to the DR and its' citizens without the benefit of tourism?

My guess is that it may resemble Haiti.

AZB, in tourism, foreigners far outweigh locals in the richest league.
So lets stick to the topic and not wander all over the place.

CyaBye3015, I don't think the DR would be like Haiti without tourism, the culture is very different. The DR wasn't like Haiti before mass tourism.

1) Yes, most hotels are foreign owned.

2) For the majority, pay in the tourism industry is low here.

The biggest problem is that the majority of Dominicans only benefit from tourism in the form of low paying jobs. Only a small percentage flows back into local businesses and communities.

Tourism needs more community participation and businesses need to invest in the local community if tourism is to remain sustainable.

The current AI model is not sustainable, the numbers don't add up and the $$$ yield per tourist is decreasing every year. The numbers of tourists might be increasing, put the yield isn't... blah, blah, blah....

I could ramble on for hours on this topic...

suarezn said:

The DR currently dominated by low budget all inclusives will start going upscale (it is already happenning).

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More are moving towards real estate as they cannot afford to stay in the tourism hotel business or afford to upscale.

Yes, we are seeing an increase in upscale developments, but it's slow and accounts for only a very small percentage of overall tourists that arrive here.
It will be a very long time before the DR is known as an upscale destination.

Most current AI cannot afford to invest in their product or upscale their hotel.
They are held to ransom by tour operators that dictate the pricing.
If they can get a better yield in Cuba, guess what, they will move their clients to Cuba.

Tourism has no road map here, this is the #1 problem.

Ramble, ramble, ramble.... jejejeje