Punta Cana was a nameless stretch of coast until two investors bought it in the 1960s
In the late 1960s the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic was undeveloped shoreline five hours' drive from the nearest city. A young Dominican entrepreneur and a New York labour lawyer bought a huge tract there, opened a 40-guest hotel, and gave the place a new name. It now draws more visitors than anywhere else in the Caribbean.
Frank Rainieri, then in his twenties, and Theodore Kheel, a prominent New York attorney and labour mediator, joined other investors to buy a lot of 58 million square metres in La Altagracia province. Locals had called the spot Yauya or Punta Borrachos; in 1970 Rainieri renamed it Punta Cana. Their first venture, the Punta Cana Club, had room for just 40 guests. Club Med arrived in 1978 with a 350-room hotel, Spanish chains followed at Bávaro, and in 1996 the designer Óscar de la Renta and the singer Julio Iglesias joined the project.
The turning point was the airport. Grupo Puntacana opened Punta Cana International in 1984, the first privately owned international airport in the western hemisphere. It now handles 64 percent of all flights into the Dominican Republic, more passengers than the capital's own airport, and in 2014 it was the Caribbean's second-busiest. European companies, mostly Spanish hotel groups, own all but two of the more than 50 megaresorts.
The draw is roughly 100 kilometres of coast facing both the Caribbean and the Atlantic, with shallow water and natural pools safe for bathing, and an average temperature of 26 °C. Beaches run from Uvero Alto and Macao in the north to Juanillo in the south, and the surrounding sea became a marine reserve in 2012. The resort's foundation keeps a 1,500-acre reserve used by researchers and has opened schools and a free clinic.
Growth has been lopsided. Verón, named after a French timber businessman of the 1930s, sprang up as an unplanned, poor town housing hotel workers, and in 2010 Haitians made up 81.1 percent of the area's population. The district counted 138,919 residents in 2022, and it is due to host the 146th session of the International Olympic Committee in 2027.
Source: Punta Cana
