The Costambar entrance road is fixed!

It's all about your attitude Anette - about how we CHOOSE to see the town & even life itself.

If we choose to be negative about Costambar then how can we expect anything to improve?

And as i said previously, things must improve or Costambar will be a ghost town with just a fraction of the businesses we have at present.

Here's a quick "pop quiz" .... How many businesses are there in Costambar? Excluding apartment/villa rentals.

The answer I've come up with surprised me!

Incredible optimism! I have read your post on dr1 and I am wondering if we are living in the same project…. (with all my respect to your opinion thou)

I don't know how many of you use the DR1 forums, but I'm going to try to start a Costambar thread highlighting why it's a great place to visit - please join me there!

Here's the link:

http://www.dr1.com/forums/north-coast/115858-re-discover-costambar.html#post978455

OK, I'm tired of "Costambar sitting on your butt & talking" disease!

I've got my camcorder out & have started shooting around town, so if you see me please wave & smile!

Here's a free promotion idea for the town - an online video on YouTube.

We have plenty of talented people here who can contribute. It is free & if we get the "tags" right we will get plenty of interest.

If the video goes viral the sky's the limit!

If you don't know what a viral video is just ask ;-)

I take all you said on board Anette & the tourist situation does indeed look desperate.

However, & maybe I didn't make myself clear here, I'm thinking about how we can attract residents - both expat & Dominican - to see what we have to offer in Costambar. This is about surviving the spring, summer, autumn low season!

Very good idea indeed and I would be more than happy if Costambar would grow to an even better place in the future.
I just see one big problem for the whole area of Puerto Plata: the tourists are slowly going away.
Many European companies have canceled their flights to Puerto Plata, so even if you would wish to go to Puerto Plata, you might have a problem with that in the near future.
The British companies have canceled a lot of flights and Thomas Cook for example has cut down from 7 flights per week to only 1 flight per week this summer. You can only travel to Puerto Plata from Spain 2 months per year - the rest of the year there are NO flights to Puerto Plata from Madrid. Next winter many European companies are not coming to Puerto Plata - for example the Scandinavian companies have completely closed the destination Puerto Plata. (The same with other European nationalities)
We still get Americans and Canadians during the winter, although they also cut down on the Canadian flights I was told - and the season is short - only 3 to 4 months.
There are rumors that Playa Dorada will completely close down the whole project..
Not that I like to be negative, however the future for the North Coast is very dark!

But we all know that don't we!

Not everybody does though. The other week we were selling surplus items & a chap from Cabarete wanted to meet me in Puerto Plata because the road into Costambar was so bad.

My question to you is this ...........

What can we do to promote Costambar both locally & further afield?

We live in a delightful, cosmopolitan, safe village with a superb "millionaires beach", charming bars, restaurants & cafes. All very reasonably priced. Hell we CHOSE to live here - let's spread the word.

Surely this is something the WHOLE community can get behind.

As a property & business owner here I for one would like to see more life in town throughout the year.

Even if I didn't have a financial investment here I can see the advantages of a thriving community - rental properties will benefit from higher occupancy rates resulting in more income for maintenance & improvements. Businesses will be more financially stable & able to re-invest profits instead of just "surviving" - we may even see the demise of "Costambar collapsing plastic chairs syndrome" ...

Finally - PLEASE let's not get side-tracked by the old disputes of local politics etc.

Finally finally -
Here's my suggestion, it's an old trick from my network marketing days - we all tell two people about what Costambar has to offer & encourage them to experience the town & tell two people about it and so on. Pretty soon we may get a "buzz" growing about Costambar.