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TOURISM&CREATIVE INDUSTRY WORKSHOP
Sustainable tourism, cultural tourism, creative tourism, culinary tourism, heritage & tourism
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1
Universidad Tecnológica de Santiago, UTESA
Recinto Dajabón. C/ Presidente Henríquez, 50.
63000-Dajabón, República Dominicana.
franorgaz@hotmail.com
2
Departamento de Administración de Empresas
y Comercialización e Investigación de Mercados
Universidad de Sevilla.
Facultad Turismo y Finanzas. Av. San Francisco
Javier, s/n. 41018-Sevilla.
mario@us.es
Ecotourism in Dominican Republic: An analysis
Orgaz Agüera
1
, F., Castellanos Verdugo
2
, M.
Keywords:
islands, ecotourism, protected areas, sun and beach tourism,
Dominican Republic
The islands have had a significant change in its economic model in recent
years, to improve tourism offer. According to main attractions tourism can
be seg-mented in: Sun and beach tourism, sports tourism, cultural tourism,
culinary tourism, rural tourism, community-based tourism, ecotourism… This
sector can cause a signifi-cant socio-economic growth to the area and, in
turn, serve to strengthen other business activities. The enhancement of different
resources is articulating the creation of a sustainable tourist offer that serves to
respond to the demand for more discerning and looking for new experiences
travelers. Dominican Republic is known as a one of the main international
tourist destination of sun and beach. Nowadays, tourist in Domini-can Republic
looks for a complementary offer, such as ecotourism. The main purpose of this
paper is to define, analyze and evaluate tourism situation in Dominican Repub-
lic, through a qualitative study, which analyses the ecotourism in this country.
The methodology consists of a combination of interviews, surveys, discussion
group and fieldwork, for which we had the collaboration of different actors
involved in tourism in Dominican Republic). The results show that Dominican
Republic has two main areas where tourists do ecotourism, which benefits from
the sun and beach destinations existing in that regions: National Park of the
East with the Saona Island (located in Altagracia province at the East of the
country), and Natural Monument of Saltos de la Damajagua (in Puerto Plata
province). The Natural Monument of Saltos de la Damaja-gua is visited by
domestic tourist, and it is managed sustainably, by the Government and local