1 · OPENING
Pepe Fanjul did not create Casa de Campo.
That fact makes his story more interesting, not less.
The golf course already existed.
The resort already existed.
Altos de Chavón already existed.
Frank Sinatra had already sung there.
Then ownership changed.
In 1984, the Fanjul Group entered the story.
The question was no longer how to invent Casa de Campo.
It was how to keep expanding a place whose mythology had already begun.
2 · WHY HE MATTERS
Hospitality history overvalues founders.
The first idea is easy to narrate.
The second act is harder.
A resort can be created brilliantly and then decline, be overbuilt or stripped of the eccentricities that made it famous.
Pepe Fanjul represents another form of hospitality authorship:
long-term ownership as stewardship.
Not the first drawing.
The decades after it.
3 · BEFORE THE FANJULS
Casa de Campo's official history traces the resort's origins to the Gulf + Western era.
Alvaro Carta came to La Romana to oversee the sugar mill. Charles Bluhdorn saw tourism potential in the landscape. Pete Dye created Teeth of the Dog. The resort began as an executive retreat in 1974.
This chronology matters.
LHL should not retroactively turn the Fanjuls into founders of the original resort.
Their authorship begins with acquisition and transformation.
4 · 1984 — BUY THE ECOSYSTEM
Central Romana's official history states that Gulf + Western Americas sold the company in 1984 to the Fanjul Group, led by Alfonso and J. Pepe Fanjul, together with key local executives who became shareholders.
The transaction included far more than a hotel.
Sugar.
Land.
Infrastructure.
Casa de Campo.
The new owners were not buying rooms.
They were buying an ecosystem.
5 · THE SECOND-ACT FOUNDER
This is the right way to understand Pepe Fanjul inside LHL.
Not original founder.
Second-act founder.
The inherited platform already had extraordinary ingredients: golf, landscape, celebrity history, Altos de Chavón, equestrian sport and villas.
The second act asks whether these pieces can be made durable, expanded and integrated without dissolving the original identity.
6 · THE RESORT AS A PRIVATE CITY
Casa de Campo is hotel, villa community, golf destination, polo centre, shooting destination, marina, beach club, cultural village, concert venue, residential address and airport-linked destination.
At sufficient scale, a resort begins behaving like a city.
Guests move by golf cart. Residents own homes. Restaurants form districts. Boats and aircraft arrive.
The unit of hospitality is no longer the building.
It is territory.
7 · GOLF AS THE ORIGINAL MAGNET
Pete Dye's Teeth of the Dog opened in 1971, before Casa de Campo's 1974 resort opening.
The sequence is revealing.
The attraction can precede the accommodation.
Golf gives the traveller a reason to cross an ocean.
The resort then captures the rest of the stay.
The bedroom does not create the trip alone.
8 · PRESERVE THE MAGNET
Long-term ownership has a specific obligation:
do not destroy the thing that creates demand.
In 2026, Central Romana and Casa de Campo reopened Teeth of the Dog after its most significant restoration since inauguration, following a reported US$15 million intervention.
A legendary asset cannot simply be harvested.
It has to be renewed.
9 · CULTURE INSIDE THE RESORT
Altos de Chavón gives Casa de Campo another layer unusual for a Caribbean resort: architecture, art, design education, restaurants, an amphitheatre and performance.
Frank Sinatra's 1982 Concert for the Americas became part of the mythology.
These elements predate Fanjul ownership.
That is precisely why stewardship matters.
When owners acquire a place with stories, they inherit intangible assets they did not create.
10 · OSCAR DE LA RENTA
Casa de Campo's official history credits Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta with contributing to the resort's ambience after the 1984 ownership change.
His presence helped connect international luxury taste with Dominican identity.
The owner does not need to personally design every layer.
He needs to retain the people who can deepen the place.
11 · VILLAS CHANGE THE ECONOMICS
Casa de Campo's current history describes a residential community with close to 2,400 villas.
This changes hospitality fundamentally.
A hotel guest stays temporarily.
A villa owner becomes part of the community.
The relationship lengthens from nights to decades.
Hospitality becomes belonging.
12 · BUILD THE AIRPORT
Central Romana's history records the inauguration of La Romana International Airport - Casa de Campo in 2000.
This is vertical destination building.
Do not merely wait for transport infrastructure to deliver the guest.
Help create the infrastructure.
Access is part of luxury.
13 · SPORTING LIFE
Casa de Campo calls itself the home of the sporting life.
Golf is only the beginning.
Polo.
Equestrian facilities.
Tennis.
Shooting.
Water sports.
A beach can be admired.
A sport creates ritual.
The guest does not ask only, “Where should I go?”
The guest asks, “Where should I play?”
14 · LONG-TERM CAPITAL
The Fanjul ownership model has one enormous advantage.
Time.
A resort held within a larger family-controlled industrial structure can make decisions difficult for short-duration financial owners.
Golf-course restoration.
New suites.
Spa investment.
Infrastructure.
Residential development.
Legacy is not preservation in amber.
It is the willingness to spend again.
15 · FROM FOUNDERS TO DYNASTY
In 2024 Central Romana appointed José Fanjul Jr. as President.
The official announcement stated that Alfonso Fanjul and José “Pepe” Fanjul would remain jointly as Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs.
The hospitality story therefore moves into another stage.
Long-term ownership becomes family succession.
The next question is whether stewardship survives generational transfer.
16 · DO NOT CONFUSE PEPE WITH PEPE JR.
This distinction is essential.
José “Pepe” Fanjul in LHL-P-051 is the senior Fanjul brother who, with Alfonso Fanjul, led the 1984 acquisition.
José Fanjul Jr. is the next-generation executive appointed President of Central Romana in 2024.
Contemporary coverage sometimes uses “Pepe Fanjul Jr.” informally.
The two biographies must remain separate.
17 · WHAT HE CHANGED
He helped take ownership of Casa de Campo from Gulf + Western and place it inside a long-term family-controlled investment structure.
He helped preserve and expand a resort whose most famous early assets had been created before the acquisition.
He participated in transforming Casa de Campo from a corporate retreat and early resort into a mature luxury destination ecosystem.
He supported a model combining hotel accommodation with villas, golf, sport, culture, marina and aviation access.
He demonstrates that hospitality authorship can occur through stewardship after acquisition, not only through original founding.
He did not invent Casa de Campo. He helped make it durable enough to become a world of its own.
18 · WHAT THIS MODEL DOES NOT SOLVE
Scale can become sprawl. A resort-city risks losing intimacy as hotels, villas and infrastructure multiply.
Residential success can overpower hospitality. Owners and residents may become more important than transient hotel guests.
Long-term family ownership can become insular. Patience is an advantage only if it remains open to professional challenge.
Legacy can resist change. Famous golf, architecture and traditions can make necessary redesign difficult.
The destination depends on large infrastructure. Airport, marina, golf and extensive grounds require major capital.
The resort's history predates the Fanjuls. Owner mythology must not erase Bluhdorn, Carta, Pete Dye, Altos de Chavón's creators, Oscar de la Renta or professional teams.
The wider corporate context carries material social responsibility. Central Romana's sugar operations have faced serious labour scrutiny. U.S. Customs and Border Protection imposed a Withhold Release Order in 2022; CBP reported that the order was modified on 17 March 2025.
Pepe Fanjul's model does not solve the tensions between private destination-making, industrial land ownership, labour responsibility and luxury.
Those tensions are part of the history, not footnotes to it.
19 · FANJUL AND SOL KERZNER
Sol Kerzner builds destinations through spectacle, engineering and a powerful resort core.
Casa de Campo grows more gradually into a private resort city.
Kerzner creates the attraction aggressively.
Fanjul inherits several attractions and compounds them over decades.
Both understand that a resort becomes more defensible when the guest has many reasons to stay inside its world.
20 · FANJUL AND HENRY FLAGLER
Henry Flagler built transport infrastructure to make Florida destinations accessible.
The Casa de Campo / Central Romana ecosystem eventually includes its own international airport and marine infrastructure.
The scales and eras differ, but the logic rhymes.
Do not treat access as somebody else's problem.
21 · LHL CONNECTIONS
LHL-H-518 Casa de Campo — principal anchor assigned to José “Pepe” Fanjul in the current LHL People Register.
Casa de Campo Resort & Villas — defining hospitality institution.
Central Romana Corporation — ownership and infrastructure context.
Teeth of the Dog — Pete Dye's 1971 golf course and principal demand engine.
Altos de Chavón — cultural, educational and entertainment layer.
La Romana International Airport - Casa de Campo — access infrastructure inaugurated in 2000.
José Fanjul Jr. — next-generation President of Central Romana from 2024; not the same person as LHL-P-051.
22 · TIMELINE
2021 onward — Major new hotel, suite and spa investments are developed.
23 · LHL STORY — BUY THE SECOND ACT
La Romana, 1984.
The resort already has a legend.
Pete Dye has cut golf holes through coral.
Sinatra has sung at Altos de Chavón.
Villas stand across the landscape.
The easy historical story has already happened.
Then the property changes hands.
Pepe Fanjul and his partners do not receive a blank sheet.
They receive something more dangerous.
A place with expectations.
A blank sheet forgives mistakes.
A legend does not.
The new owner's job is not to claim the first chapter.
It is to make sure there is a fifth.
And a tenth.
And a fiftieth anniversary.
LHL-P-051 · LHL-H-518 · Casa de Campo · Long Essay / Video
24 · A SECOND STORY — BUILD THE AIRPORT
Most resorts advertise how to reach them.
Casa de Campo helped build an airport.
The difference is strategic.
A luxury destination can complain that access is difficult.
Or ownership can treat access as part of the product.
Runway.
Private aviation.
International arrivals.
The guest journey begins before the lobby.
At sufficient scale, hospitality stops waiting for infrastructure.
It starts creating it.
LHL-P-051 · Casa de Campo / Central Romana
25 · LEGACY
José “Pepe” Fanjul belongs in the Luxury Hospitality Library because he represents a form of authorship that begins after creation.
Casa de Campo already possessed extraordinary ingredients before 1984.
The Fanjul era did not need to invent the mythology.
It needed to keep the mythology economically alive while adding new layers.
Residential community.
Airport.
Marina.
Hotel reinvestment.
Sport.
Wellness.
Infrastructure.
The result is less a resort than a privately organised destination.
This is not a clean founder story.
It is a stewardship story.
And that makes the attribution more useful.
Luxury hospitality is full of brilliant first acts.
The harder achievement is sometimes ensuring that somebody is still willing to invest in the fifth.
Pepe Fanjul did not invent Casa de Campo. He helped make it durable enough to become a world of its own.