Punta Cana International Airport — Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

Privately built and privately run, Punta Cana International Airport, coded PUJ, stands apart from most major airports worldwide because Grupo Puntacana, a resort development company, built and continues to own and operate it rather than a government aviation authority, an arrangement that grew directly out of regional resort development in the 1980s. The airport's open-air terminals, built with thatched palm-leaf roofing over the check-in and gate areas, give arriving passengers an immediate sense of the tropical resort atmosphere that defines the eastern Dominican Republic's coastline. As the primary gateway to Punta Cana's dense strip of all-inclusive beach resorts, PUJ ranks among the busiest airports in the Caribbean and the Dominican Republic's busiest by a wide margin, with charter and scheduled flights arriving from across North America and Europe in especially high volume during winter months. That resort-driven economy makes PUJ one of the clearest examples anywhere of an airport whose traffic tracks holiday demand almost perfectly.