This is true for us too. We had never heard of DR until around 2005 when , at the time , a travel agent mentioned SD as an alternative to Jamaica .. Visited SD in 2006 , hated it and vowed never to come back ..but the next flight out of DR to LGW was from PUJ...so had to stay 2 nights in Punta Cana...thought Punta Cana was much better than SD...with excellent flights to and from home via Antigua . The rest , as they say , is history......10 years and counting...
Nowadays , you will see a lot of promotions for travel to DR in Orlando , Miami and even in Brazil. I can remember seeing an advert showing Blue Mall in Punta Cana somewhere in São Paulo.
Well time is changing, before the goverment only know how to sell beaches, Mexican teach MITUR that there are bounch of people that want to see something more than nice beaches, when goverment decided to go over Mexican market went to Mexico city to show the amazing beach of Punta Cana but was a fail only 7,000 Mexican visited the country in the 2014, then they decided in the next year promote Santo Domingo, Culture, Gastronomy and say is also close to the nice beaches then came 14,000 Mexicans.
In March 2016 started the Aeromexico flights to Santo Domingo with 4 weekly flights in a 99 seats airplane, after 3 months increased to 5 weekly flights, in a year was daily flights, by the 2nd. year changed to 124 seats airplane. Because of that goverment finally understood that they most sell whole country not only sell the Republic of Punta Cana. Recently Aeromexico started new seasonal winter flights to Punta Cana from Nov until Mar, and Aeromexico executives said that they hope their clients arrive in Santo Domingo and return from Punta Cana and soon become the Punta Cana flight a year round flights.
The Canadian airline Airtransat this year has created new packages with 5 days in Juan Dolio beach and 2 nights in Santo Domingo with Hodelpa, that option is only avilable in their winter flights to Santo Domingo from Toronto and Montreal, the rest of the hotels are now starting to work with tour agents to create similar packages.
So now more people will start to know that we do not have only beaches, that they have more options to pickup. Few weeks ago I went to Santo Domingo to spend time with old Dominican friend that is living in NY, we met a french guy living in Dubai was staying in same hotel where my friend was, we started to talk with him and he told us that he was in Punta Cana for 4 days, the beaches are really nice but beaches are all the same arround the world, he said I have seem in the pacific beaches as nicer than here, after 4 days there he got bored and read about Santo Domingo colonial zone and decided to come to discover the city. We gave him a tour and had a lunch, at the end he said was so happy to discover real Dominican Republic and all the places in the colonial zone was really amazing place, and he defintily could return and explore detailed the musseun, all of them can not visitted in only one day.
