Cruise Giants Are Buying Islands. Will Samaná Be Next?

As the Dominican Republic prepares to cut the ribbon on the new cruise terminal in Samaná Bay, there is a sense of déjà vu I cannot ignore. I’m not against tourism. I live here, and I love it. But a project this size deserves a harder look than a ribbon-cutting gives it.

What is being built

The Samaná Bayport project in Santa Bárbara, backed by a group of Dominican investors, broke ground in July 2022 with a reported investment of USD 22 million. Plans include a floating pier able to handle up to 5,000 passengers, and with its anchorage positions the facility is expected to serve up to 10,000 passengers a day and three ships at once. At the time, Samaná handled about 50,000 cruise passengers per season (Seatrade Cruise News). Those are 2022 plans, and details may have changed. But the order of magnitude is the point: from tens of thousands of passengers to potentially hundreds of thousands, in a bay of about 100,000 permanent residents.

The tricky economy of cruise tourism

It is easy to get dazzled by the headline figures: thousands of passengers per ship, millions in port fees, jobs for locals. But the economics of a port call are thin. Studies put onshore cruise passenger spending at roughly USD 70 to 100 a day, and often less in isolated ports where the cruise line owns the terminal and shops or sells exclusive excursions. In Barbados, average onshore spending per cruise passenger fell from USD 110 in 2005 to under USD 90 in 2024. In St. Lucia, cruise visitors accounted for only 3% of total tourist spending, against 97% from stay-over guests (World Bank, annexes to Rethinking Caribbean Tourism).

The Dominican Republic already feels this. It received 2.4 million cruise passengers between January and November 2025, up 153% from 2019, while air arrivals grew 35% over the same period (Caribbean Journal). Fast growth in the lowest-yield segment is exactly what I argued against in Stop Using Tourist Arrivals as a Proxy for Investment Potential.

What is at stake in Samaná Bay

This is not just any bay. Humpback whales visit it between January and March every year to mate, give birth and nurse their calves. Whale watching in Samaná began in 1985, and by 2012 more than 40,000 people took whale-watching trips in the Dominican sanctuary during the breeding season, over 90% of them international visitors (International Whaling Commission handbook). The sector depends on strict rules, with boats limited to 9 km/h in the sanctuary, a minimum distance of 50 m from adult whales and 80 m from groups with calves, and no more than three boats per whale group. Even so, the IWC notes that the growth of cruise-ship tours has increased the pressure on captains to approach whales faster and closer, producing more infractions of the guidelines.

That is before we add very large ships. The risks that scientists associate with them, such as underwater noise that masks whale communication and ship strikes, are well documented in other whale habitats. The figures I have seen quoted for them, underwater noise above 170 dB and at least 100 endangered whales killed by ship strikes each year globally, are estimates that I’d encourage anyone to verify against primary studies, since they vary by methodology.

The industry’s track record

I’d rather rely on court records than on adjectives. In 2016 Carnival Corporation was convicted for dumping oily waste into the ocean and covering it up over eight years, paying USD 40 million, then described as the largest fine for environmental crimes in US history. In 2019 it pleaded guilty to six probation violations, including falsifying training records, rushing ship cleanups before court-appointed monitors visited, and dumping food waste mixed with plastic into Bahamian waters. The fine was another USD 20 million (Anchorage Daily News). That is USD 60 million in fines against a single operator, and it was the third environmental dumping conviction since 1998. Not every ship and not every company is the same. But when the parent of the world’s largest cruise brands has a record like this, it is fair to ask who will be monitoring what happens in a bay we cannot afford to lose.

A different story is possible

I am against lazy, copy-paste, short-term development thinking. We need a model that respects:

Environmental limits. Samaná’s ecosystem is its main economic asset. Destroy it and the game is over. That means hard caps on daily passengers and ships, tied to whale season.
Local value capture. Tourism dollars should stay in local hands, not with offshore conglomerates. Locally owned excursions and a published share of terminal revenue for the community would be a start.
Slow tourism. Attract travelers who care, stay longer and give back more than they take.
Community consent. Engage the people who will live with the consequences long after the ribbon is cut.

If we sleepwalk into this future, Samaná could become yet another beautiful place ruined by greed, greenwashing and bad planning. It doesn’t have to be. There is still a narrow but real window to build a blueprint for sustainable cruise tourism, where visitors are welcome, nature is sacred and profit does not come at the expense of the people who live here. Where we can look our kids in the eye and say: we built something better.

Marek Zmysłowski Blog