Things to Do in Punta Cana: The Resort Excursion Market

Back when I was running SXM Deals in St. Martin, a guest wanted to make a big booking through the site. It was a lot of money, so I wouldn't take the payment until the operator confirmed. The operator took something like two days to get back to me. Two days, not two minutes, and I lost a lot of money on it.

I have never run a boat in Punta Cana. But if you are an operator looking at "things to do in Punta Cana", plan around resort guests, especially the all-inclusive market, and not the cruise-and-hotel mix I knew from Eagle Tours in St. Martin.

A market that lands at the airport

Punta Cana International Airport says it handled more than 11 million passenger movements in 2025. The Central Bank counted 5,275,492 foreign non-resident arrivals through PUJ that year, about 72% of the country's foreign non-resident air arrivals.

Where they sleep matters more. Hotel association and national statistics figures put 54,418 hotel rooms in La Altagracia province, more than half the country's total, with Playa Bavaro and Arena Gorda holding over 25,000 between them. Much of it is all-inclusive, so your guest has already paid for food, drinks and a pool. Any excursion you sell is competing with a free day on a sun lounger.

Cruise is a side dish. There is no formal cruise pier in Punta Cana itself. The ships that do call anchor off Cap Cana and tender passengers into the marina, and those calls are few. The big cruise volume on this side of the island goes to La Romana, where Central Romana runs a two-berth terminal on the Rio Dulce, plus the Catalina Island anchorage offshore. If you want cruise guests, you are really building a La Romana and Bayahibe product, not a Bavaro one.

Saona is the volume product, and volume has a price

The trip everyone sells is Saona Island. Saona sits inside Parque Nacional Cotubanama (the old Parque Nacional del Este), and Bayahibe is the main departure point. The government puts Bayahibe at roughly a million tourists a year, about 18% of all tourist visits to attractions in the country. Back in 2014, an environment ministry technician told Diario Libre that up to 120 boats gathered on Bayahibe beach daily, waiting for excursion guests.

Even allowing for how old that number is, a lot of companies run some version of the same trip, and the guest at the desk cannot tell them apart. That is a commodity. You win it on price, on hotel desk relationships, or not at all.

The rest of the standard menu is the same story:

• Buggy runs. Another resort-desk staple. Check the real margins with someone who runs one before you buy a fleet.
• Party catamarans. Open bar and music with a snorkel stop. The bar is the product, and every bar looks the same from the dock.
• Hoyo Azul. The cenote sits inside Scape Park in Cap Cana, a private park that sells full-day admission with no cenote-only ticket. If you sell it, you are reselling someone else's gate.

Where the bookings come from

On this coast the resort controls the guest. Excursion representatives sell trips inside resorts after guests have arrived. I won't quote commission rates, because I haven't seen them published and they vary by deal. But you should go in assuming the desk takes a real cut, and that a desk which doesn't know you won't sell you.

OTAs are a second channel, not the whole plan. For direct bookings, private charters, fishing and small groups are the place to test, aimed at guests who search before they fly.

When a desk, an OTA and your own website all sell the same catamaran, separate availability lists can get you overbooked. We built Junglebee so agents and desks book into one charter booking system with live availability.

The paperwork and the park

Licensing is not optional here. In September 2024 the Ministry of Tourism (MITUR) gave tourism businesses without a current operating license 30 days to start regularizing. The list named tour operators, maritime transport, tourist excursion services, water sports, horse ranches and zip lines. Applications run through MITUR's online portal.

Saona adds another layer. The park belongs to the national protected areas system under the Ministry of Environment, and ordinary tourist visits carry an entrance fee under the ministry's 2017 tariff resolution. Check whether your supplier includes it. After a joint meeting on Bayahibe, the Navy, MITUR, the environment ministry, tourist police and the hotel association agreed to tighten checks on the permits each excursion needs from MITUR, the environment ministry and the Navy. Sort all three before you print a flyer.

Weather, weed and the transfer clock

Punta Cana faces the Atlantic, and sargassum is the risk the brochures skip. In summer 2025 EFE photographed Bavaro covered in weed while resorts ran tractors to clear it, and a local dive guide said he was struggling to attract clients because they assumed every dive site looked the same. Hurricane season runs June to November on top of that. Build a weather and weed policy into your terms now, not in July.

The other constraint is the road. Saona boats leave from Bayahibe, at the far southwest end of the province from most Bavaro hotels, so a "day at the beach" is really a long transfer with a boat in the middle. One late pickup pushes the whole convoy back. The pickup schedule probably decides your margin more than the boat does.

Where a new operator can still win

I wouldn't start a company here by launching another Saona catamaran. You'd be buying a seat in a price war run by the hotel desks.

Look at these instead:

• Private and small-group trips. Cap Cana and the luxury resorts are the place to test whether guests will pay to skip the convoy.
• The cruise side at La Romana. A different buyer from the Bavaro lobby, on a ship's clock.
• Answering fast. A desk agent with a guest at the counter books whoever confirms first.

That last one is the SXM Deals lesson again. I was the agent waiting two days on an answer, and nobody with a guest in front of them will wait that long either. Punta Cana just runs that rule through a lobby instead of a pier.