Punta Cana History

By Karoline Urena • October 6, 2008

In 1969, a group of American investors bought a land with an area of approximately 48 square kilometers of pure jungle in the far east of the Dominican Republic. This piece of land is almost rectangular, of which approximately 10 kilometers bordering the sea, with many exotic beaches of white sand and thousands of coconut trees, but shall have no access roads.

Shortly after a Dominican businessman Frank R. Rainieri joined to them, who had the idea to develop the area for tourism purposes. Under the direction of the Dominican Frank R. Rainieri and the American Theodros W. Kheel, the Tourist Development, Residential and Industrial Company, S.A. (CODDETREISA), currently GROUP Punta Cana, SA, began developing the sufficient amount of land in 1971 to inaugurate a small hotel known as Punta Cana Club, which consisted of 10 cabins, 2 rooms, a clubhouse, a small town for employees, a power plant and a rustic airstrip for light aircraft. At full capacity, this small hotel could accommodate 40 people, but never reached the maximum, nor was profitable enough. But it showed that the property had great potential, which caused that began in 1978 is the construction of the first hotel of 350 rooms on the Mediterranean Club Paris, France. It should be noted that until 1981 when the Dominican government completed the construction of the first road to connect to Punta Cana with the road network in the country, needed 6 hours to get from Higuey, the town nearest to Punta Cana. Today Punta Cana and Higuey are separated by only 35 minutes.

This, among other reasons, facilitated efforts to build the Punta Cana International Airport. After a battle of 8 years and 3 different governments, was obtained permission to build what would be the first entirely private international airport in the world, which started in 1982 and inaugurated in 1984 with its first international flight, a twin-engine turbo propeller from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

After the Punta Cana Group, arrived at area companies such as Newco, who bought a piece of land at Punta Cana Group to make a Mediterranean Club opened its doors in 1981. A few years later the brothers Barcelo arrived at the Bavaro area, located north of Punta Cana, where he bought land and began building hotels in 1984, the same year the opening of Punta Cana’s International Airport. Since that time and with the help of the airport this area began a rapid ascent to become what is now the main destination in the Caribbean.

Because of its isolated location and lack of public services provided by the Dominican government, GROUP Punta Cana, SA has had to settle for himself and keep all kinds of services necessary for their operations such as access roads, security, water, electricity, garbage collection, disposal of sewage, schools and so on by creating projects and subsidiaries. Since 1997 the owners of the Punta Cana Group are Theodros W. Kheel, Frank R. Rainieri, Julio Iglesias and Oscar de la Renta.