When was punta cana founded

By the first real airport was operational. Thereafter, the number of annual visitors grew rapidly from 2, passengers to almost 2. Many of these visitors are loyal fans who have been coming back for years, drawn back by an incredible beach vacation in one of the luxury resorts along the coast.

Currently there are over 60 resorts, stretched along a strip of 30 miles of beautiful beaches. These resorts, along with the different businesses which have flourished due to the onset of tourism, have become the backbone of the local economy.

It is worthwhile to note that today approximately a quarter of the country's GDP is made in Punta Cana. The initial investors couldn't have dreamt that the area would become so important for the entire country. Foreign Investments Club Med Disease and torture imported by the Europeans eventully wiped out the poor Tainos.

As the colony grew, some business-minded Europeans established cash crop plantations to feed markets in Europe. In need of new laborers to replace the Taino Indians, Europeans imported African slaves to work their plantations. By , the easy to locate gold deposits of Hispaniola were significantly exhausted. Then Cortez discovered silver deposits in Mexico. Upon hearing of the next lucky strike, most Spanish residents of Santo Domingo left for Mexico, leaving only a few thousand settlers behind.

Because of the predominance of livestock, initially introduced by Columbus, these settlers sustained themselves by providing food and leather to Spanish ships passing Hispaniola. In the late s, France took control of the western half of Hispaniola. Thousands of Africans were soon brought to work the land of what was renamed Haiti.

In , a slave revolt broke out in Saint Domingue. For fear of losing their colony to the slaves, the French abolished slavery in With calm in Saint Domingue, the French focused their soldiers on overwhelming the Spanish on western Hispaniola. In , that western part of the island became the French-owned Republic of Haiti.

Eastern Hispaniola next fell into contention between Spaniards and French. In , the eastern side of the island returned to Spanish rule. In , the Spanish settlers declared an independent state, but weeks later, Haitian forces invaded the eastern portion of the island and incorporated Santo Domingo. For the next 22 years the entire island came under Haitian control.

The 70 years that followed were characterized by political unrest, civil war and government power struggles by Dominican strongmen. Disputes continued with Haiti and power returned to the Spanish for a short period of time. Turmoil in the early s led the United States to intervene. In , U. However, the head of the army during the American occupation, Raphael Leonidas Trujilo, was a crooked repressive dictator. The anniversary of his death is a public holiday in the Dominican Republic.

People go on tours because they want to get to a warmer climate, they want to get to more sunshine, to beautiful landscapes, to beautiful water. Tourism depends very heavily on the protection of the environment of the places that attract tourists. For tourism the environment is the attraction.

If the environment is damaged, the business is damaged. Vacation destinations have a tremendous stake in the protection of the environment.