“When we returned, we told our father that we had agreed that Frank Elías should be the next leader,” recalls Paola. “Francesca and I felt that Frank Elías was the likeliest to be able to take the business to the next level. While we both thought that we would be able to maintain it perfectly well, we thought that his vision and natural instincts made him better suited to the challenge.”
Despite the switch in generational leadership, Frank and Haydée remain very much on the scene. “We are extremely fortunate that we can still seek our parents’ support and guidance,” says Frank Elías. “In some family enterprise transitions, this isn’t possible because the founders simply aren’t around anymore. Our succession came at a very good time, when my sisters and I had acquired enough business experience but with our parents still able to offer their advice.”
Part of the next generation’s ambitions for the business lies in overseas expansion. Given Grupo Puntacana’s forty years’ experience of operating a private airport, Frank, Francesca and Paola see promise in repeating the successful formula elsewhere. “With our knowledge and record of efficiency, we’d like to seek airport opportunities in Latin America or other parts of the world,” says Frank Elías.
The vision for the future also involves transforming Punta Cana’s airport into a major international logistics hub. “We are strategically located for both the US and Europe,” says Frank Elías. “We want companies to establish a base to reexport goods from here. We envisage an entire aeronautical ecosystem, with a cargo logistics center and all the technical support that goes with it. Our ambition is thereby to bring new industries into the Dominican Republic.”
While the second generation has only recently assumed the leadership, Grupo Puntacana’s longterm ethos means that thinking about the future is already underway. A third generation of Rainieris are coming of age and are gaining experience outside of the company before they join their parents. “We have a deep family commitment to what we’ve built,” says Francesca. “We want our children to share in this, continue it and grow it.”
“Preparation is key,” says Paola. “We’ve told our children that if they want to work for Grupo Puntacana, they first need to have studied all the right things and also to have worked outside of our business for a couple of years. That experience of working for another company builds self-respect for when they join us and become bearers of the Puntacana dream.”
The Rainieri family: Our lives
“My grandparents came to the Dominican Republic at the end of the 19th century,” says Frank Rainieri. “They were from Italy, but met in Bogotá, Colombia. They established a hotel there, but when revolution broke out, they sold up and moved to Haiti, then a land of opportunity. But on arrival in Port-au-Prince, they didn’t like it. So, they sailed onward to Puerto Plata on the north coast of the neighboring Dominican Republic, by which they were enchanted.