abandoning his several years in agriculture
RR | Cancun | August 31, 2024
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RELATED TOPICS: Cancun, Rainieri Cultural Center, Fidel Castro, Frank Rainieri, Punta Cana Group, Milagros Germán, Puerto Vallarta, Punta Cana, Richard Burton, Vallarta
Frank Rainieri, founder of the Punta Cana Group, recounted the details of the beginning of Punta Cana as a tourist destination, which he pioneered, inspired by Puerto Vallarta, where they built a Hotel to accommodate the actors of the film “The Night of the Iguana,” starring Richard Burton.
Rainieri said that after the film, Vallarta was predicted to develop as a tourist destination, which made him, at the age of 24, plan the new destination; leaving his job of several years in agriculture, where he rented spray planes and tractors.
The dream began to become a reality when an American businessman hired Rainieri to take him to the beaches of the coast where there was nothing but jungle and beaches. There they ended up negotiating 63 million meters for USD 250,000, “today in Punta Cana you don’t buy a small plot for USD 250,000, that’s how the property was bought,” Rainieri said.
“When I landed for the first time in a helicopter, there was no other way to get there, I fell in love with the place, I saw all those coasts and I remembered that in my younger years there was a time when I couldn’t return to the country at the end of the Trujillo dictatorship because of family problems with the Trujillo regime and where I would go was to that uncle in Puerto Rico and I saw when Fidel Castro in ’59 closed tourism and they started building hotels in Puerto Rico, but I said, the beaches of Puerto Rico are not as good as these and what we have to do is make a beach destination,” Rainieri said.
At the age of 24, he began to think about the project in Punta Cana, but then a tragedy occurred. His fiancée died on a Flight and so he left agriculture and focused on the tourist destination as an advisor to the American company that had bought the land. After a while, they held a meeting in New York with the partners and there he supported the project with the ideas of Puerto Vallarta and finally became a partner in what is now Punta Cana.
As reported by REPORTUR.mxIn June, the Dominican government, through the Ministry of Culture, plans to create the Rainieri Cultural Center in Punta Cana. The minister of the portfolio, Milagros Germán, has held meetings with the tourism businessman Frank Rainieri to finalize the sectorial authorization. (Dominicana plans the Rainieri Cultural Center in Punta Cana).
