Hotels lie half-built, or just completely abandoned, everywhere. Here is a once beautiful coast, but literally destroyed. Many of the names on these abandoned developments are very familiar - Hilton, Best Western, so many more.
The Dominican Republic has structured its tourism infrastructure on the megadevelopment concept - enclosed, gated developments where all pleasure is offered, even pushed. The style of tourism, which has already died in other parts of the world, rolls on in the Dominican Republic.
It is a shame, because none of the all-inclusives offer any glimpse of Dominican Republic culture: in fact, they are universally plain, with a sort of continental style that could be found in Colorado Springs or Mexico City or somewhere in England.
Somehow, the Dominican Republic's reputation for all-inclusives has killed any regular hotel sector, which is maybe why so many of these hotels lie empty. Megadevelopments attract bad tourists; all-inclusives attract pigs and bores.
Maybe this place was an emerald next to Haiti. But its tourism strategy has wrecked the country. There are of course a few wonderful areas, and beautiful places. But those places, like the Samana Peninsula, Los Haitises National Park, the southwestern desert coasts, aren't easily accessible - somehow, the country's reputation has turned it into one big megadevelopment; whitewashing its culture, and making it one overcrowded, messy place, with bad drivers dishing their garbage into the jungle.
