If I keep my nose in my pocket, I can still smell the scent of the new world today. The thick walls of the "Casa Beaterio", the second oldest monastery in the New World and today a small guesthouse in the heart of the colonial city of Santo Domingo, and the Caribbean Sea air have left an indelible mark on me. The American Development Bank is calling for more sustainability, especially in tourism, in the second phase of the redevelopment. The project partner Tourcert from Stuttgart, on our initiative, has extended its standard to include essential criteria for biodiversity and, with our support, has acquired a first experience in the north of the Dominican Republic.
For four years now, we have been working here on the topic of "Biological Diversity in Tourism" and therefore we have become the logical contacts for the Dominican Ministry of Tourism, which is pushing ahead with its implementation. What aroused great interest from representatives of authorities and NGOs (more than 40 participants in the workshop), did not initially arouse enthusiasm in hotels and restaurants. However, we have already carried out three biodiversity checks with hotels here and thus won the first pioneers for a completely new topic, in the middle of the 500-year-old backdrop of the oldest European buildings in the Americas. Already worth a trip, we are eagerly awaiting the results in a few years' time and the path we will follow.