Hotel Bahia Principe

lovemyisland said:

I heard that a Bahia Principe Hotel is being build in the D R. How is the public awareness?
We here in Jamaica are getting a monster of this hotelchain,
they don't seem to have choosen a very lucky site, as there have been lots of accidents on the site since they started to build, twice, parts on the concrete costruction site collapsed, resulting in one death and lots of injuries, then a couple of weeks ago there was a huge fire, which caused a lot of damage,
all in all this monster hotel, of course it will be an AI , will have 1980 rooms, but infrastructure and environment is not on the developers agenda, any feed back would be appreciated.

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And your point is???

lovemyisland, I'm afraid I have to echo cyabye3015. Your post left me scratching my head. If your intent is to complain about the chain's hotel in Jamaica, you need to find a Jamaica-related or broader-Caribbean website -- DR1.com is focussed on the DR. If you want to make charges, warnings, whatever about the construction safety record of the chain, the Environment Forum is not the appropriate forum on DR1 for that. Now, if you have some environment-related behavior to discuss (you only throw environment in as an after-thought at the end of your post) that you think might be repeated in the DR context, then please clarify. Otherwise this thread closes or goes...

Keith R
Environment Forum moderator :glasses:

Mixed Feelings

lovemyisland said:

.... How is the public awareness?

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I think this question is justified.

There are hotel owners that care about the environment, others, however, do not.
Whereas the employment sector welcomes big investments in tourism the environmental impact is often not taken into consideration.
The ecosystem in Samaná for example is very vulnerable (Bahía de Samaná with its whales and its shrimp production, Los Haitises National Park, flora in the hills, reefs, caves, "unspoilt" beaches, etc.) but the country's environmental laws seem to be subordinated to foreign interests and local friends.
This is why so many have very mixed feelings about the new airport in El Catey.

m'frog

BTW, welcome to the board.

M'frog, I also suspect there's more to the story, but his post, as-is, makes it difficult to remain in this forum, since it focuses mostly on the (implied) construction safety record of the hotel chain elsewhere, not on the DR, not on the environment. If it can be made more relevant to both, then I am willing to let the thread proceed as long as it does not become just a long list of innuendo.

If you've followed the Environment Forum or the Green Team blog very long, you know I am all for praising the hotels that try to improve their environmental performance and criticizing those that don't. As far as I am concerned, that goes double for Samana -- a vulnerable ecosystem I particularly love.

I think the point that LoveMyIsland is trying to make is that during the past few years, chains like the RIU and now the Bahia have been changing the look and feel of the Jamaican coastlines as well as contributing to the damage of the ecosystem. Runaway bay where the Riu now stands and where the Bahia is being built had once been relatively untouched coastline. This is now not the case and a lot of jamaicans resent the influx of Spanish developers coming in and developiong mega resorts on what once was a beautiful area. There are also reports of a lack of concern for the jamaican workers health and safety.
What the Poster is not aware of is that the Developers are not Dominican and that the Dominican Republic is also going thru the same thing....