Ernesto Veloz warns: Verón-Punta Cana land-use plan remains stalled

The Territorial Land-Use Plan (POT) for Verón-Punta Cana has yet to get off the ground. That was the warning from Ernesto Veloz, president of the Eastern Hotels and Tourism Projects Association (Asoleste), in remarks to arecoa.com. Concern is rippling through the Eastern hotel sector as room expansion keeps pace. Veloz was blunt: "We remain concerned and hopeful about the land-use plan because if we don't finish our tourism land-use plan, our future is not well defined."

The hotel leader's diagnosis points to two fronts. On one hand, a chorus of opinions without technical grounding on how the plan should be drafted. On the other, administrative paralysis that keeps it from being implemented. "The problem we have is that right now the land-use plan is stalled," he said. He added that the standstill hurts the destination and the entire Eastern region, where urban pressure grows at the same rate as tourist arrivals.

The most uncomfortable point concerns the road works underway in the area. Veloz called them "patch jobs" if the POT is not applied, because the plan includes a road network that would generate all intersections and connections. Put another way: without the organizing framework, each new project solves one bottleneck and creates another. The reading is clear: the hotel sector is not asking for less growth, it is asking for rules that make growth sustainable.

The context matters. The Eastern region concentrates most of the country's hotel investment and sustains a large share of arrivals through Punta Cana airport. Without a POT in force, developers compete for land without uniform criteria, municipalities lose orderly revenue capacity, and the destination accumulates congestion risks that become costly to fix later. Asoleste had already flagged that the East's main challenge is pairing growth with planning. Now the message is louder.

What to watch is the calendar. If authorities speed up final approval of the Verón-Punta Cana POT, the destination gains a framework to organize roads, land use and hotel density for the next decade. That is the scenario the sector expects, and the one worth pushing for now.