Howard Johnson International of the United States in alliance with Corporación Hotelera Boyce of Mexico will operate the 170-room Hotel Macorix, in San Pedro de Macorís, 15 minutes from Juan Dolio Beach, half an hour from La Romana and an hour from the capital city of Santo Domingo. The hotel was recently refurbished and new rooms added by the Universidad Central del Este university, which uses the hotel as a hotel school. The Macorix will cater to businessmen visiting the area that has a large duty-free manufacturing zone, a university that has a large international student population and the Juan Dolio beach area and that would prefer to stay at a hotel where payment for the room-only is required. There are thousands of rooms in the Juan Dolio area that primarily operate on the all-inclusive tourism packages. Guillermo Rocha, former president of the International Association of Hotels and Restaurants, and president for Howard Johnson for Latin America and Caribbean will be in Santo Domingo for the formal opening of the hotel. Mexican hotelier Javier Lastra, is the new general manager of the hotel. He is a graduate of the University of Cornell with over 20 years in hotel management. Howard Johnson operates 500 hotels in the US, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Barbados, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Malta. Corporación Hotelera Boyce is a Mexican hotel operator. This will be their first hotel in the Caribbean. In Mexico the company manages nine hotels. In the Dominican Republic the two companies are represented by lawyer Enrique de Marchena Kaluche, president of the H.J. Franquicias del Caribe S.A. and Corporación Hotelera Boyce de las Antillas, S.A., local affiliates of the international hotel companies.
