Fifty-six million dollars of the Pension funds of workers in the Dominican Republic invested in the first resort to open in Micheswithin the framework of the ambitious tourist development that is promoted for this coastal municipality of the El Seibo province.
“(The tourism development of) Miches it was born with Dominican capital, and it was born with capital from the stock market, by an investment fund,” said economist Yamil Isaías, president of the Association of Hotels and Tourism from El Seibo and Miches (ProMiches). “And he came supported by the Pension funds of the Dominicans.
The private sector, in alliance with the Dominican Government, promotes the development of this destination, where the largest number of hotels are expected to be concentrated along 25 kilometers of beach, in millions of square meters covered mostly with coconut farms.
In the province of El Seibo, the National Statistics Office estimates that more than 93,000 inhabitants reside. This population will be able to benefit from the 10,000 jobs that would be generated throughout the construction process of the tourism projects and another 6,000 in the operation.
A recent development
The tourism development of Miches (of about 22,000 inhabitants) is an old demand. But it was in 2018, approximately, when it began to be executed.
Isaías, who is also executive vice president and partner of the investment fund manager Pioneer, narrates that in 2017 Club Med, a French company that is one of the pioneers in the tourism development of Punta Cana, was interested in opening a hotel in Miches, to continue his line of exotic vacations. For the business, he relied on Pioneer and its Partnership Development Fund.
In May 2018, the construction of the Club Med hotel began Miches Playa Esmeralda, in which the 56 million of the Pension fundsas a capital contribution, captured by the Pioneer fund, on behalf of the management of the Fund Administrators Pension funds (AFP).
“Part of the task that we have as ProMiches this year is to create a cluster, where the carriers must sit down and come to an agreement”President of ProMiches
“The benefit that this fund generates belongs to the pensioner,” Isaías guarantees. “The surplus value of the land (…) is money that goes in favor of the pensioner through the fund.”
The total investment in the hotel was 106 million dollars. In 2019, it opened its doors with 335 rooms.
For Isaías, when the business with Club Med began, “there was born Miches”, in terms of its current tourism development, which already also has the Temptation hotels Miches Resort and the Temptation Grand Miches Resort -of Mexican capital- with a total of 496 rooms inaugurated in December 2022.
Under construction are El Zemí, with 534 rooms and in the Dominican capital, and Secrets and Dreams, both in Spanish capital. Work will soon begin on another Viva chain resort, with 487 rooms, among others in process.
Businessmen grouped in ProMiches they committed in March 2021, by signing an agreement with the Dominican Government, to invest a minimum of 1,000 million dollars in development in the municipality, which includes hotel rooms and tourist residential projects. The government agreed to build and manage public works, such as an aqueduct and access roads.
A challenge: transportation
Miches It is one hour from the Punta Cana International Airport and in the southern part of the bay of tourist Samaná, where humpback whales arrive.
For the transfer of tourists from the airport to the hotels and in the municipality itself, ProMiches It has the challenge of having a transport system in the area in which there is little opportunity for conflicts as have occurred in Punta Cana with the unions.
“Part of the task that we have as ProMiches this year is to create a cluster, where the carriers must sit down and come to an agreement”, said Isaías.
Miches, in northwest; Punta Bergantín, in the north of Puerto Plata, and Pedernales, in the south, are the three destinations for which investors are currently being sought and thus diversify the Dominican Republic beyond the iconic Punta Cana. Although they are promoted at the same time, Isaías considers that do not compete with each other, because each one “provides something different.”
When the first land for the hotel development in Miches was purchased in 2018, the square meter was purchased for $50. “$50 wasn’t cheap,” Isaias clarified. “There you could get the land for 25 or 30 dollars, because it was a farm.” He reported that, currently, land sales businesses in Miches are closing between 80 and 100 dollars per square meter. The appreciation of the land has been driven by the ongoing tourism development itself and the public works built and planned, with a boulevard and an aqueduct already under construction. “There are already operations that have confirmed that the destination works, there is an association that is ProMiches, which is working on an organized plan; the public-private agreement brings a lot of value to it”, added the executive.
