The Tour Operator’s Initiative for Sustainable Tourism Development (http://www.toinitiative.org/), a network of tour operators committed to sustainable development, announced its support of the effort to put a stop to plans to allocate a portion of the National Park of the East to a private hotel group. As part of this collaboration, tour operators including the Beach Trotters (Spain), Viaggi del Ventaglio (Italy), Hotelplan (Switzerland), FreeWay Adventures (Brazil), and LTU Touristik and World of TUI (Germany), and hotels such as the Punta Cana Resort and Club, Coral Hotels by Hilton, Natura Park, Viva Resorts and Gran Dominicus, have joined ranks with those forming a plea to bring commercial development of the park area to a halt.
During a recent meeting, the organization expressed “unanimous concern about the potential threats that the Parque del Este, one of the most important terrestrial and marine parks in the Caribbean, is facing regarding tourism development.” Participants of the meeting strongly supported a call for the immediate and complete enforcement of the protected status of the National Park of the East, as well all other natural reserves in the Dominican Republic, and agreed to send a signed declaration to UNESCO and various other institutions, locally and internationally. For more information on this effort, write to Giulia Carbone at
gcarbone@unep.fr.