Punta Cana, located on the east coast of the Dominican Republic, has become internationally recognized as a beautiful tropical vacation paradise with luxurious, eco-chic and affordable accommodations. In fact, Punta Cana has now become the number 1 tourist destination in the entire Caribbean, and this incredible transformation has occurred in just 28 years! This news has been published in many of the popular travel magazines and websites. I want you to know that this statistic is based on REAL data, not just hype. The statistics are compiled by the Caribbean Tourism Organization, a non-profit organization that closely monitors 29 countries in the Caribbean region.

I will discuss these data in more detail below. My discussion will focus on the data released in 2010, as the Caribbean Tourism Organization has not yet released the December 2011 statistics, so there is not yet a complete set of data for that year. However, if you look at the data available for the first 11 months of 2011, the overall trends remain the same.

The Dominican Republic received more non-resident airport arrivals than any other country in the Caribbean, easily surpassing Cuba, the second most popular tourist destination. The following is a quick reference list so you can see the top 10 Caribbean destinations along with the reported total number of non-resident airport arrivals:

1. Dominican Republic – 4,124,543
2. Cuba – 2,531,745
3. Cancun Mexico – 2,106,485
4. Jamaica- 1,921,678
5. Puerto Rico – 1,369,814
6. Bahamas – 1,368,053
7. Aruba- 825,451
8. The US Virgin Islands – 691,194
9. Martinique – 476,492
10. Saint Martin – 443,136

Now, let’s break these statistics down further into Europe travel, US travel, and Canada travel. Europeans overwhelmingly choose the Dominican Republic as their favorite Caribbean vacation spot. His next favorite is Cuba. The United States has a tight 4-way race between Cancun, Mexico, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Cancun outperforms the other 3, but the Dominican Republic gained 6.8% in just one year and this trend continues. Punta Cana is now the number 1 destination within the Dominican Republic for Americans, replacing Puerto Plata on the north coast, which used to be the number 1 destination. Canadians also seem to like the Dominican Republic a lot, especially Punta Cana, and they choose it as their second favorite vacation spot in the Caribbean after Cuba. Please note that residents of the United States are not allowed to travel to Cuba.

So, with this compelling data in mind, let me ask:

How did Punta Cana become so popular?

With so many popular tourist destinations, it would be hard to pinpoint one specific thing that caused the area to skyrocket in popularity. Not so with Punta Cana. On the coast of Punta Cana, which stretches for about 39 miles from Bavaro in the north to Cap Cana in the south, there is an easily identifiable event that took place in 1984 that literally changed everything and completely transformed this region in the tourist mega-popular. destiny that is today.

Have I piqued your curiosity yet? Keep reading…

Punta Cana is absolutely beautiful. It offers wide, silky white sand beaches with a bright, warm blue sea along its coastline. It’s so tempting that it draws you in; some say it even “seduces” you. When you add to that the thick groves of coconut palms swaying in the tropical breezes along the entire coastline of this region, you have the iconic Caribbean paradise seen on postcards sent to those not lucky enough to continue. the trip but surely wish he had.

However, before 1984 few people really knew about this tropical jewel. It remained largely undiscovered by most world travelers until the construction of the Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ). In Spanish, the official language of the Dominican Republic, this international airport is called “Aeropuerto Internacional de Punta Cana”.

You see, no matter how spectacular a place is, if you don’t have a convenient and inexpensive way to get to the area, many people won’t see it. Before the Punta Cana International Airport was built, the small runway that had been built in 1971 could not handle the large jet planes. Also, to get there from another country, you had to fly to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and then endure a bumpy 4-hour bus or taxi ride to Punta Cana. The unpaved road was narrow and crowded. of giant potholes The road was also washed out in heavy rain and motor vehicles were sometimes stopped by horse traffic, making the pace of weary travelers wanting to get to their hotel miserable.

PUJ air traffic has grown by leaps and bounds and is on track this year (2012) to serve more than 4 million people! It now receives far more traffic than the next busiest airport in the capital Santo Domingo. There is no other private airport in the world that comes close to this degree of business success.

People come to Punta Cana from all over the world now. International airlines that operate at Punta Cana Airport are Air Canada, AirTran, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental, Delta, JetBlue, KLM, Spirit, United, US Airways and Westjet. USA 300, recently defunct (since January 30, 2012), was established by Apple Vacations and also served PUJ for a long time. Canadian charter airlines to Punta Cana airport include Air Transat, Sunwig, Skyservice and Canjet. They run during the cold and bleak Canadian winters.

So an area that started with very humble beginnings some 4 decades ago now commonly provides beds for over 70,000 people at a time. Punta Cana has definitely established itself as one of the best places that world travelers think to go to. And… there is no end in sight to the growth of this area. Punta Cana’s approximately 39-mile coastline has essentially been a “gold rush” for major hotel corporations, especially Spanish-owned ones, ever since the international airport opened up the area. Classy high-rise resorts, perfectly positioned to take advantage of the view, have sprung up almost overnight. Infrastructure has also been vastly improved as money has poured in for big projects.

Europeans and Canadians seemed to have “discovered” Punta Cana before the Americans. However, over the past 10 to 15 years, Americans have quickly caught up. In fact, this has happened at such a rapid rate that entire resorts have been built to cater specifically to American Americans, as the customs of Europeans and Americans sometimes clash a bit inside the resorts, although some Americans prefer the European atmosphere.

Americans and Canadians in the Eastern Standard Time zone can depart on a direct flight in the morning and arrive in Punta Cana at noon with no jet lag since the time zones are the same, except during daylight saving time when it is only one hour different. Even a trip from the west coast of the United States or Canada is a relatively easy trip when compared to other equally exotic destinations.

Punta Cana Airport also fits in very well with the Dominican landscape and makes a good first impression when tourists enter the country. It has an open-air design with a quaint thatched roof made of palm fronds. All materials used to build the airport were brought in from local sources, including palm, local timber, and native coral. This was a very intentional effort by Frank Rainieri and the other investors in Grupo Punta Cana who financed the airport privately. With insufficient funds for a project of this magnitude, Frank Rainieri approached a Dominican architecture student at Pratt University. He agreed to do it free of charge to establish a name for himself. Since then he has become quite famous and has been well paid for other projects in the Dominican Republic.

Originally, Grupo Punta Cana tried to get the government of the Dominican Republic to finance, or at least partially finance, the construction of the international airport, but after 8 years they realized that they had to finance it privately on their own. They must be given credit for their vision and persistence because a private airport of this magnitude has never been built before. However, they had the much-needed approval and cooperation of the Dominican Republic government or the project would never have gotten off the ground.

There you have it. The tourist success of the Punta Cana coast depended on one thing: building an international airport capable of giving tourists easy and cheap access to this beautiful paradise. It took incredible vision and perseverance.