Juan Dolio

Like Boca Chica, Juan Dolio has a story of boom and bust. The resort area began life as a pristine beach and developed into the place to go on the southeast coast for sun and sea for residents of Santo Domingo, which is 40 minutes away. When the Europeans discovered it, the all-inclusive resorts started springing up. In the early 1990s, it was a pioneer in the all-inclusive concept, which caught on immediately, and no sooner was the blaze ignited than North Americans started to jump on it as well. But as soon as Punta Cana came online with its newer, more luxurious AIs and long expanses of palm-studded beach—with white sand at that—the turistas started to abandon Juan Dolio for the newer hot spot.

The resorts dropped their prices to try to stem the flood-tide of tourists heading farther east, but in doing so they had to cut food costs and service staff, the best of whom were already being recruited Punta Cana. As food went downhill and rooms became more shabby, Juan Dolio entered a years-long cycle of slow decline.

How things have changed. The year 2007 has brought the sounds of construction everywhere in Juan Dolio. And the beach here has been revitalized under a new program spearheaded by President Lionel Fernandez and the State Secretariat of Tourism. What a difference a "little" sand can make! It's now closer to Miami's South Beach than any other place in the D.R., which is finally striving to attract more chic tourists to its shores to supplement the bargain-basement, mass-market tourism of the past decade.