Abby Weiss, Reporter
Here at NCHS, tropical places like the Bahamas or Jamaica are popular vacation spots. With natural beauty and plenty of tourist opportunities, it is no surprise that they make great places to visit. Considering that every February I go to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic I get to experience the result of the hard work that goes into this tourist industry. It is gorgeous there and my family never gets tired of it. But like many other tourists who spend their stay at exclusive resorts, I failed to see for many years the juxtaposition between the affluent beach hotels and the residents who live in the country.
For the past few years, we have been flying to the Santo Domingo airport and taking a two hour car ride to the resort. These two hours are filled with views of Dominican life and poverty. At the resort I stare in awe at how spotless and lavish it is, but during this car ride it’s the complete opposite. There is trash all along the roads, countless abandoned hotels and restaurants, arid fields, and homeless people walking along the roads. There was graffiti everywhere and smoke coming from the trash. It saddens me that the only thing I can do is lie on the beach a few hours later and pretend I didn’t see any of it. I didn’t realize how oblivious I was to the country’s state before I saw what it was like outside of Punta Cana, of course my seven-year old self assumed that the whole country was filled with elaborate and high class buildings.
What these trips have taught me is despite how much profit is made from these five-star hotels, one-third of the population is living below the poverty line. Tourism has helped countries such as the Dominican republic in many ways like profiting indirect services such as catering and accounting. There is no doubt that it makes up for a large amount of their foreign income and boosts the employment rate. However, it is easy for them to get too dependent on foreign countries. The best resorts are more prone to import food and other materials from other nations rather than buy it from local farmers, hurting the local economy. This explains a lot of the arid fields I witnessed during the trip to the hotel. Also, the juxtaposition between my hotel and Dominican towns shows that facilities such as schools and hospitals are focused on less than airports and taxi services. While tourism does increase specialization of jobs, there is little education to increase social mobility. I’ve been seeing most of the waiters at my resort for the past eight years because it’s difficult to find a better job. While tourism has many indirect benefits, most of them occur nonlocally.
One year, instead of going to a five-star resort, I would like to stay in Santo Domingo and interact with the people. While it’s easy to feel connected to a country by visiting it every year, the connection is not as strong if you don’t interact with the country’s civilians and learn about their lives.
