"HOTELS!!!!!!! The polluters with the deep pockets." Well Sam, now we know where you stand in all this.
As a hotel owner who has been preaching to locals for years that trash is not appreciated by anyone, much less our lifeblood, the tourists, I resent the statement made by Samanasuenos that we hoteliers are responsible for the litter and open garbage seen almost everywhere in this country. Pardon my language but that is pure B.S! The Dominicans are responsible, everyone of them from the one on the beach drinking a bottle of rum who then throws it in the water, to the plastic cups flying out of the car on the highway in front of you, to the delivery truck drivers who clean out their cabs in front of my hotel entrance. We pick up the trash daily.
Until you educate the populace on the importance of anti-littering the problem will remain. We went through this in the US and so have other 1st world nations.
Do you remember the American indian with the tear in his eye that the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign so effectively used?
Some of the big A1's may be responsible for environmental pollution, but trash strewn beaches or street litter is not one of them and the hotels should not be asked or MADE to pay for a problem not of their making. And by the way, about 5 of us local Las Galeras hotels paid to clean the main beach after Semana Santa for a number of years until a few years ago when CEBSE organized a clean up by school kids. Regular beach cleaning is now being done by our new municipality (or is supposed to be done). We'll see.
Don't be so quick to lay blame until your ducks are in a row. Without tourism and it's hotels and sub-industries, the DR would falter even more seriously in this global economy. After all, what other natural resource does the DR have to offer that would generate the amount of revenue that tourism does? Pineapples? Heck, even Dole pulled out when that market fell to the government's greed.
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