don't they have the dollars altready? Pre-paid. Why is it to their advantage? In fact, with the AI's, it would be to their advantage if the guest left and consumed less food and beverage.
john
Johne, what you say makes much sense. However, many of the AI resorts either operate guided tours or are associated with a particular tour company. Thus, rather than having tourists discover the sights on their own and lose the potential of earning a profit from selling the exact excursion as a tour package, it's best to capture such excursion demand and make a little more money from the vacationers while you can scare them to death.
Think about it.
If you are vacationing at the Dominicus Palace Resort in Bayahibe and decided to visit Altos de Chav?n, you can easily reach the place on your own and be back at the resort later that day fully intact without being mugged, kidnapped, whatever.
However, if the resort workers tell you how "dangerous" it is to be outside of the gated resort and that those "creatures" (ok, they don't refer to the Dominican masses are creatures, but thats the image of otherness they need to sell in order to earn the sale of a tour package) are best observed with the company of a represetantive of X tour company, which happens to have a desk or office on the resort premises offering tours galore costing US$40, US$50, even up to US$80 a person; it becomes easy to see why scaring the tourists is to the benefit of resort companies and tour companies alike.
Notice, the resort workers always stress that its dangerous to discover the DR on your own, but its safer with their designated tour guide/company. Most tourists buy into the sales pitch that they fail to notice that their "safe" tour package doesn't include a guard with a rifle. Thus, they are being driven up and down the countryside on "Safari Trucks" as if they were in Africa seeing exotic animals (in this case, humans) with no security in sight what-so-ever. What happened to the danger of being outside the resort gates? Are the tourists any safer with a skinny tour guide talking on a microphone and smiling all along the tour, but no security around?
Either the tourists are dumb or the resort/tour companies have a heck of a sales pitch. I think its the latter more than the former.
BTW, a most of the foodstuff resorts use in their restaurants is produced within the DR and the alcoholic beverages AI packages allow the visitors to indulge in tend to be local brands, thus the costs are cut tremendously once you consider the lower costs of buying in bulk; which is what many resorts do.
There's money to be made and if scaring people helps open their wallet a bit, then the resorts will do and have been doing that very well.
In fact, don't even think of tour companies in the DR as actually selling tour packages, but rather think of them as companies selling safety. There is nothing a tour company offers that a tourist can't do on his/her own with not much personal risk being taken. In fact, I would say that there is no difference in risks between discovering the DR on your own vs. on a guided tour since in both cases you won't be under the protection of a private guard.
The Dominican population is also marketed the same way for the benefit of the "safety" industry. For example, have you ever asked yourself why so many Dominicans go to great length to buy bars for their windows, but don't think twice about putting their entire families on a motoconcho? Never mind that the number one cause of death in the DR is not murder or heart attacks or cancer, but vehicular accidents.
If only the media and marketers would put justifiable attention to the things that threatens the life of Dominicans rather than overblowing other, perhaps more Dominicans would become afraid of putting their entire family on the most dangerous form of transport and highest life threatning risk a person can ever take in the DR. But, I guess there's not much money to be made in killing the motoconcho business.
And I'm on a rant so I'll stop now, but I hope you get my point.
-NALs
