Hotel riles Puerto Plata beach town residents

Santo Domingo.- The Cofresí Beach Neighborhood Board, of Puerto Plata, on Wed. complained the Lifestyle Holidays Vacation Club has appropriated beaches, and destroyed green areas in apparent complicity with tourism and environmental authorities.

Speaking for the Board, Chris Coates and Amaury Germán McKinney denounced the situation and other Club operations they call illegal, and harms a large number of families, “who came to stay to live, and others to live and establish businesses destined always to tourism, both domestic and foreign.”

The community leaders said the hotel chain even offers beaches for sale, presenting them as private, although they constitute a public asset “which must remain at the disposition of the citizens without any restriction and without violating the image of the tourism activity of the north zone the country.”

They warn that, together with organizations in Puerto Plata, they will begin “a tenacious and sustained struggle not to let themselves be stripped of Playa Cofresí and to be able to recover the green areas that have been removed, as well as beaches to which no Dominican has access who is not guests of that hotel.”

“Another of the things they did was close a public access road, as if they were the owners and don’t allow entry unless the person who intends to go to the hotel,” the Board leaders added.