The Dominican Republic

People all over the world love to have the chance to get away from work, the cold, or just life in general, to travel to an exotic and new destination. Wendy S. Hesford and Brenda Jo Brueggemann state that, “The tourist industry creates a desire in us for escape, difference, and mobility” (274). That desire for travel fuels us to spend our vacations in luxurious hotels and resorts to relax, spend a week or two on the beach, and experience a new and exciting place. Additionally, Hesford and Brueggemann have discussed how tourism feeds on our fascination for places that are “exotic — but not too exotic” (278). For many people traveling to a tropical destination, experiencing the culture is not as important as experiencing the sandy beaches and

This is true for the Dominican Republic; it is a country stricken with unemployment, high crime rates, and poverty, but that is not represented in the resorts and hotels. This idea has been explored by Jane Kuenz with American culture and identity representations in Disney parks. Disney World and Disney Land give its visitors a sense of living in a fairy tale, when that is not an accurate representation of American life (359). With this previous study of a country’s representation, I will be exploring the representations of the Dominican Republic in tourism and in the media, and how tourism companies try to limit what you see of the country so you can experience that paradise lifestyle. I argue that websites for tourism in the Dominican Republic conceal major issues that are prevalent in the country today in order to attract tourists to their destination and represent the country as a perfect

These issues, however, are not displayed on the country’s tourism website. As explored earlier, the country’s tourism website feeds on the assumption that travellers do not really care about the country that they are visiting. Many tourists want to travel to a tropical destination that is warm and sunny, and that is how the country is portrayed in tourism; it is represented as a tropical paradise. Through browsing the Dominican Republic’s tourism website, it is easily noticed that there is virtually no information available about the country’s history, culture, or the identity of the people who reside there. The ways in which the website represents the country of the Dominican Republic are quite limiting to what the country is truly like. The facts about the country given involve the geographic location, the time zone, weather, population, and a small amount of information about the government (“Dominican Republic Has it all”). This can also be seen within the images of the country provided by the Dominican Republic’s tourism website. Looking through the images of the various cities within the Dominican Republic, what sticks out the most is the lack of images of locals. The majority of the photographs are of the sandy beaches, sunny and blue skies, or of attractive Western couples (“Dominican Republic Has it all”). This portrays a very