Tourism Minister Felix Jimenez is confident that the southwest’s time has come, with a specific focus on Pedernales. News reports say that World Tourism Organization experts are here to deliver a master plan for the region’s development by April 2005. He expects that hotel construction should begin in December of this year and that 3,500 hotel rooms should be in operation by December 2006.
Jimenez said that he has identified 13 beaches in the area that can be developed in an environmentally sensitive way.
Ecologists and representatives of the hotel sector have opposed hotel construction in the Bahia de las Aguilas, a biosphere reserve area coveted by several foreign investors during past governments.
As reported earlier in Hoy newspaper, the three-person team that will design the master plan is made up of Jean-Robert Reznik, director general of Accor Tourism and Leisure. Accor operates two Sofitel hotels in the DR and one Mercure in Santo Domingo. Accor as of yet does not have a beach property, although it recently purchased 28.9% share in Club Med, which operates the Club Med Punta Cana in the East. Reznik signed as part of the Tour Operators’ Initiative (http://www.toinitiative.org), a tour operator organization that backs sustainable tourism.
Another member of the team is Francesc Giro, consultant from the Fundacion Natura of Barcelona, Spain, described in their web site as one of the first NGOs set up in Spain devoted to the conservation of biological diversity through the protection, improvement and restoration of the natural ecosystems.
The third team member, Josiane Benoit, represents the World Tourism Organization.
Shortly before leaving government, President Hipolito Mejia signed a provision into the law, authorizing the development of the Bahia de las Aguilas natural reserve, by designating it a recreational area. At the other end of the spectrum, however, environmentalists challenged the law that removed the protected status of this and several other areas across the country. Environment Minister Max Puig, along with other environmentalists, is awaiting a Supreme Court of Justice ruling on the issue. Hotel development at the Bahia de las Aguilas would violate the UNESCO biosphere reserve category granted to the Pedernales beach site.
During his previous term as Tourism Minister during the first Fernandez government, Jimenez had announced that seven international hotel chains were interested in developing the environmentally fragile area.