Four to Five decades...
For the DR? None!
For PR/MEX/BAH/JAM/VI? A lot!
Cuba needs five decades of infrastructure upgrades, before it can even begin to become a problem/competitor to the DR's flourishing tourism industry.
While for Americans Cuba will be a cheaper travel spot 90 miles off Miami, rather than a trek over sea to little PR. Jamaica's tourism industry is stagnant for the past decade, as the need to bring island-wide attractions has proven impossible so far there. Bahamas can't offer anything more than it has already, there's no more room/place to exploit. Virgin Islands are just that, a few spots of sand in the sea, nothing that's remarkably different than the FL keys... Mexico's drug wars have all but made it the least enticing place to find peace, unless it involves ducking and diving under tables.
Each place owns a particular positive tourist's magnet; they will continue to pull good number each year. But again, nothing great the DR hasn't been able to overcome during the past decade without even honestly trying.
As far a Cuba is concerned? Great living museum and post prohibition spot to check for US tourists, but nothing more than that awaits the AI and comfort seeking US client. Just dropping the travel ban will not mean that Cuba's system of repression and control around the whole country; will be dropped as well by the party in charge there.
Cuba's once renowned beaches and tourist attractions are eroded, in need of complete upgrades and the lack of support infrastructure is impossible to avoid looking at.
Give Cuba the next four to five decades and it will become competition of sorts to the DR. But I must remind you that the DR is slowly becoming a Ritzy place for high end clients. Reason why old low cost vacationing spots like POP look so deserted today, void of past glories as the spot to be at.
Take away cabarete and you're pretty much left with little in offerings there now. Not so with the East coast...
to become "competition of sorts."
Cuba, according to the latest caribbean tourism statistics saw 2.4 million tourists in 2009. That makes them strong competition already.
By comparison, the Dominican Republic had appproximately 4 million tourists, roughly the same number as visited Cancun and Cozumel on Mexico's caribbean cost.
Given those statistics, and knowing that Cuba's numbers are mostly devoid of American tourists, and the DR's are heavily influenced by the American market, the DR had better become proactive, sooner rather than later.
With close proximity to the US and the pent up US interest in visiting the forbidden island, Cuba will easily overtake the DR as the number one tourist destination in the Caribbean and it will not take four to five decades, but more like four to five years.
However, the biggest selling point for mass market tourism to Cuba by travel agents and tour operators will be the comparison of costs.....and we all know that taxes add about $200 to every flight into the DR, which is I believe, the highest in the Caribbean.
The clock is ticking and the time is now for the DR to prepare for that eventuality.....but the answer will not be, as you suggest, in high end tourism on the east coast. Other than Cap Cana and the Punta Cana Resort, the haphazard, poorly planned/never planned layout and poor infrastructure of the east coast will keep that from happening for some time to come.
Respectfully,
Playacaribe2
