Frank Rainieri

Francisco Rafael 'Frank' Rainieri Marranzini is a businessman in the tourist industry in the Dominican Republic. He is the chairman and founder of Grupo Puntacana. According to Forbes, Rainieri has one of the ten largest fortunes in the Dominican Republic, with a net worth near the billion-dollar mark as of 2014. In 2015, he was designated ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Dominican Republic, a position that his father also held four decades earlier.

Early life
Rainieri was born into a family with tradition of hospitality. His paternal grandparents, Isidoro Rainieri and Bianca Franceschini, migrated from Bologna, northern Italy, to northern Dominican Republic, and established two hotels, one in Puerto Plata and the other in Santiago; they had more than 10 children. His parents were Francisco Rainieri Franceschini and Venecia Marranzini Lepore (daughter of the Italian immigrants Orazio Michelo Marranzini Inginio and Inmaccolatta Lepore Rodia, who migrated as children with their respective families, all of them natives of Santa Lucia di Serino, in southern Italy).

He went to college in Philadelphia at Saint Joseph's College, now Saint Joseph's University., finalizing them at APEC University, in Santo Domingo.

Punta Cana

In 1969, Rainieri and Theodore Kheel acquired a 58-million square meter lot on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, which was covered with jungle and six miles of beach. Their first project was a 40 guest hotel called the Punta Cana Club, inaugurated two years later. In 1979, they constructed the Puntacana Hotel. The Punta Cana International Airport followed in 1984. In 1997, Rainieri and Kheel partnered with Oscar de la Renta and Julio Iglesias to start work on the Punta Cana Marina and the real estate development of the area.

References 

Category:Living people
Category:1940s births
Category:Date of birth missing (living people)
Category:People from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
Category:Dominican Republic people of Italian descent
Category:Saint Joseph's University alumni
Category:Dominican Republic businesspeople
Category:Dominican Republic billionaires
Category:Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella
Category:People of Campanian descent
Category:People of Emilian descent
Category:Ambassadors of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Category:Ambassadors to the Dominican Republic