Listin Diario publishes today an extensive interview with three persons knowledgeable on inclusive tourism development. Those interviewed expressed their concern the development plans unfolded by the Abinader Presidency could create tourism ghettos in Pedernales and not bring real development to the community and the southwestern region. The government is promoting public-private alliances with large hotel companies to build resorts in the Cabo Rojo beach strip. Many of these companies already operate large resorts in the Punta Cana area in the East.
In December 2020, President Luis Abinader issued Decree 724-20 creating Pro-Pedernales, “a public, irrevocable, real estate development and investment, administration, source of payment, guarantee or public offering trust, for the tourism development of the province of Pedernales and surrounding areas.”
During an interview with Listin Diario, sustainable tourism specialists Lissette Gil, the founding president of the Pedernales Tourism Cluster Marino Jose Vilomar and father Antonio Fernandez, director of the Foundation for the Support of the Southwest (Fundasur) are advocates of a different model for Pedernales. They argue that the tourism development plan for the province of Pedernales must guarantee respect for natural resources, promote small businesses in the area and local talent, be governed by the rules of sustainable tourism and be part of a circuit that benefits not only this province, but the entire Enriquillo region,
Lissette Gil, former executive director of the Dominican Consortium for Tourism Competitiveness (CDCT), considers that given its unique attractions, a new model must be used for its development. She says: “Building a ghetto in Cabo Rojo with a model of vertical structuring and business corporations does not respond to the global trends.”
“We are concentrating on a single space, creating a pressure with this massive development that can be extremely impacting for Pedernales itself and for the southern region,” Gil warned.
Father Antonio alerted that people aspire to more than have a job making beds or serving drinks in a big hotel. Fernandez says the large tourist complexes are seen by many as “farms to milk tourists,” who are not allowed to leave the hotel because they will be robbed or because they will be embarrassed to see poverty.
Father Fernandez says:” I understand that it is necessary to build some hotels in Pedernales, to welcome people, but we need to simultaneously promote small businesses not only in Cabo Rojo.” He points to previous development plans that call for promoting the beach area of the town, and actions to promote small local businesses, training for locals. He advocates for developing fishing routes, “because all these beaches are wonderful to travel by boat.”
He sees the development as an opportunity for creating small businesses to generate wealth for the entire Enriquillo community and not ghettos. The Enriquillo region is formed by the provinces of Barahona, Pedernales, Independencia and Bahoruco, an area of 6,961.43 square kilometers.
For Marino José Vilomar, owner of the Doña Chava hotel (in downtown Pedernales), is concerned the government is talking about the development of Pedernales when in reality the focus is on the coastal strip of Cabo Rojo.
“That is to say, it is not in Pedernales, the head municipality, it is not even the province, because they are not talking about Oviedo. What they are talking about is Cabo Rojo. So I was wondering, what are we going to do to motivate visitors from Cabo Rojo to visit Pedernales? Are they going to build the Biosphere Reserve Interpretation Center, or are they going to build an amphitheater or a museum? They have to present us with something that will motivate the people of Cabo Rojo to come to Pedernales, because if they come to Pedernales the authorities will have the duty to keep the city clean…” [The government public-private alliance for Pedernales relinquishes the hotel companies from paying municipal taxes.]
Cabo Rojo is an almost unpopulated community located some 18 kilometers southeast of the town of Pedernales. In addition to its beach strip, it is best known for the Cuevas de los Pescadores, from where small boats take visitors to the beach of Bahía de las Águilas, the main touristic attraction of Pedernales.
Lissette Gil proposes the development of Pedernales be reverted from one of enclave tourism to an inclusive regional proposal. “You lower the pressure, raise visitor satisfaction, promote horizontality and local economic growth, and promote true local development. You lower the pressure if instead of having 12,000 rooms in Cabo Rojo [as the government proposes], consuming water, energy, resources, generating waste, generating wastewater, you put 2,000 rooms there and you put 2,000 more in Oviedo; and you go up to Mulito and put 200 rooms, and you also go to Duvergé and Polo and make a circuit…”
“Tourism is welcome, but the model cannot be the same. We have to break that scheme and understand that now we are talking about a tourist destination and the tourist destination is a broader destination than the one we understand. The destination is not Punta Cana,” Gil points out.
Gil, Fernandez and Vilomar advocate for working with the Sector Plan for Tourism Land Use Planning for Pedernales (POTT) that was prepared in 2012 by the Ministry of Tourism (Mitur) and contemplates instead the construction of 4,000 rooms, organic infrastructure and free access to the beaches.
Tourism specialist Lissette Gil says that while in the 70s and 80s people were happy to be locked up drinking, dancing, with a swimming pool, air conditioning and a big bed and marble in the bathroom, this is outdated now. The trends in the evolution of tourism in the 21st Century are different.
She says the tourists of this century want an authentic experience in the places visited. They want to be able to discover. “The great luxury of the tourist of the 21st Century is not in marble or air conditioning. It is biodiversity. It is sitting on a beach to see the stars at night. It is the local culture. There is an awareness on the part of the tourist of the 21st Century of the responsibility as a human being to not impact the place visited. In fact, we no longer talk about sustainable tourism, we talk about regenerative tourism.
“All you have to do is look at the trend studies of the World Tourism Organization, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, and the International Ecotourism Association. You only have to read a little bit. The Southern Zone is so diverse… We are concentrating [the proposed development] in a single space, creating a pressure with this massive development that can be extremely impacting for Pedernales itself and for the southern region,” she warns.
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Listin Diario
24 March 2022