Planning for a rapid recovery from
natural disasters is known as “business
continuity,” “sustainability,” and
more recently as “resilience.” We call
it common sense. Companies that
can quickly adapt to change are able
to create competitive advantages
for themselves, increasing their
profitability. Over the last 50 years,
Puntacana Resort & Club has been
forced to confront myriad challenges
beyond extreme weather, forcing us
to innovate and sharpen our skills
in response to fresh challenges. We
believe this has made us a stronger and
more profitable company.
In 2007, our company took on solid
waste. In the face of unsafe landfilling
and rising costs, we launched a “Zero
Waste” program for our resort,
separating all of the resort’s solid
waste and initiating one of the largest
corporate recycling programs on the
island. We used worms to transform
our organic food waste into compost,
which we used as fertilizer on our
golf courses and landscaping, as well
as to produce organic vegetables.
Through Zero Waste, we managed to
recover close to 60% of all solid waste
produced by the resort, approximately
20 ILHA
24 tons a day, and convert it into
useable materials. All told, this saved
us hundreds of thousands of dollars
in waste hauling fees and produced
tangible benefits for the resort.
Through the Grupo Puntacana
Foundation, our company began
restoring the coral reef in front of
our property fifteen years ago. The
reef provides many benefits to our
company. It protects our beaches from
erosion, provides snorkeling and scuba
activities for our guests, is a source of
seafood for our restaurants and income
for local fishermen. The coral reef also
provides vital protection for our coastal
resort from storms like Irma and Maria.
Studies by The Nature Conservancy
have demonstrated that a healthy coral
reef can provide hundreds of millions
of dollars of avoided storm and flood
damage to coastal infrastructure in
places like Punta Cana.
Coral restoration is a technique that
allows us to grow corals in underwater
and land-based nurseries and then
transplant the corals back on the reef.
Much like traditional plant gardening,
restoration allows us to actively
restore degraded reefs, creating
new habitat for fish, sea turtles, and
other creatures. “Coral gardening”
has also created new activities for
visiting tourists and divers, and new
job opportunities for local fishermen.
When the next hurricane comes, we
believe that having a healthy coral
reef will be in an investment in storm
protection and in our business.
Being an innovator offers another
valuable benefit: it attracts fellow
problem-solvers. Puntacana Resort
& Club has become a magnet for
inventors, innovators, and creators
trying to solve constantly evolving
problems. We now work with
two dozen different universities,
foundations, and government agencies
to confront new challenges to the
tourism industry. Every time we face a
new problem, it seems our resort is the
first stop for every entrepreneur, mad
scientist, or company looking to test
new ideas, products, and theories on
a resort daring enough to experiment.
Being surrounded by out-of-the-box
thinkers exposes us to new ideas and
makes us more competitive.
Companies, we believe, can be
disruptive agents of change, breaking