The tourism boom is also driving up informal businesses in the Dominican Republic
Tourism in the Dominican Republic has fueled entrepreneurship, with micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises seeking to capitalize on the dynamism and economic potential of this sector. Despite this, many of these businesses operate outside of local regulations, making them less competitive and more vulnerable.
Of the approximately 642 micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) linked to the sector in three of the most important tourist destinations in the country – Punta Cana-Macao, Barahona-Pedernales, and Puerto Plata – 42.2% of them are informal.
This is reflected in the Sectoral Survey of Tourism (Ensetur 2025), carried out by the National Institute of Migration (INM RD) to analyze the relationship among company structure, job creation, and the national and foreign workforce.
71.6% of these businesses are micro-enterprises with no more than 5 workers, 22.5 percentage points higher than the 49.1% of formalized micro-enterprises, in a sector that shows a trend toward higher levels of regulation at larger business scales.
Most of these MSMEs offer services within the food and beverage segment – with 76.4% -, 17.6 percentage points more than the 58.8% of businesses formally registered in this activity.
According to Diario Libre, 52% of these companies are located in Punta Cana-Macao, 41% in Puerto Plata, and 7% in Barahona and Pedernales.
“Informal employment is a persistent feature of tourism, and is closely linked to the integration of migrant populations into occupations with low social protection, high turnover and limited regulation, which increases their socioeconomic vulnerability,” the INM RD study emphasizes.
The organization notes that informal businesses in the tourism sector “are characterized by small-scale operations, flexible organizational structures, and a strong concentration on labor-intensive activities,” making these productive units a source of income for vulnerable communities and a means of labor integration for migrants in the country.
Challenges to formality
According to the institution, the concentration of informal micro-enterprises in strategic tourist centers creates high demand for flexible, seasonal, and low-skilled labor, which is usually met by migrant labor, posing challenges for formalizing employment, labor inspection, and migration management.
In the case of properly regulated micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), companies with more than 20 employees account for 61.5% of jobs. However, in the informal market, more than 85% of employment is concentrated in businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
If informality is analyzed by occupation, informal employment reaches 19.7% in kitchens, 15.6% in cleaning, 13% in services, and 12.2% in management, all exceeding formal employment.
The Migration Institute states that the study focuses on micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in the sector due to restrictions on access to data from the country’s large hotel chains.
