Puerto Rico Ebbing as Tourist Destination
One of the most popular vacation spots in the Caribbean for four decades, Puerto Rico, is seeing the flow of visitors wile away in favor of the Dominican Republic or Cuba.

According to a study commissioned by the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association, one of the causes is the failure to increase the number of hotel rooms or tourism jobs in the island.

Puerto Rico's weak performance comes as other Caribbean nations with lower operating costs are successfully courting travelers, including a growing number of upscale vacationers, and investing significant resources to enhance their tourism infrastructure and hotel room counts, the study indicates.

"Cost of operations is indelibly linked to the health of a country's tourism industry," said Lorraine Ortiz Valcarcel, spokeswoman for the Caribbean Hotel Association.

The Dominican Republic, which leads the Caribbean with 674 hotels offering nearly 60,000 rooms, has earmarked money for developing beaches, new golf courses, all-inclusive resorts and other attractions. Meanwhile, the tourism sector in Puerto Rico, which has 12,700 rooms in 145 hotels, has remained largely stagnant, officials said.

Tourism in Cuba has overtaken sugar as the island's top source of income in recent years. Most visitors to Cuba come from Europe, Canada and Mexico because of Washington's travel restrictions. Nonetheless, US visitors round the 80 thousand in the current year, when a total of 2.5 million tourists are expected by the end of 2006.

Historically, Puerto Rico, where manufacturing makes up roughly 42 percent of the economy, has underemphasized the territory's $3 billion tourist industry because its leaders concentrated on bringing in U.S. companies by offering federal tax breaks, officials say.