Well, it used to be a "secret" that Royal Caribbean cruise lines leases a beautiful private beach on the north coast of Haiti. Until the late 1990s or so the company's brochures and customer service agents said that the water-sports focused port-of-call was on "an island in Hispanola" - never mentioning Haiti out of fear (I assume) that revealing the real location could be bad for business. The Haitian government complained about the cover up to the media and now, if you scroll down on the company's description of the place, it does say the beach is in Haiti. Strangely, they have changed the spelling of the area's Kreyol name - Labadi - to the more Anglo-phone friendly Labadee .... and then gone ahead and made their misspelling a registered trademark. Can you imagine a tourist firm changing the spelling of Paris to Pairiss or London to Lundone and then copyrighting it? I wonder if Haitian school children should worry about misspelling on their geography quizzes out of fear of being sued for copyright infringement.
The annual lease and passenger entry fees are the single biggest source of tourist revenue in Haiti. In the Caribbean region attracting tourist dollars is the lifeblood of economic development. Advances in neighboring Dominican Republic demonstrate what "could-have-been" in Haiti where there was promising growth in tourism in the late 70s/very early 80s. A couple years ago I met a middle-aged woman in Chicago who said that when she was in her 20s she had gone to Port-au-Prince on a cruise. Back then Club Med had a location just an hour up the coast from the capitol. But political instability combined with fear surrounding the early discovery of HIV/AIDS in Haiti contributed to a sudden collapse of the tourist market. Since then, further deforestation, infrastructure decline and ongoing lack of political leadership make you wonder whether revival of tourism is anywhere on the horizon.
Royal Caribbean's expanding presence in Haiti offers some hope - but it's not without its caveats. It's totally surreal the first time you drive from dusty Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, and pass through the zone of lush trees where Royal Caribbean's fenced off compound comes into view. (Reforestation of that part of the island was a company initiative) Through the tall chain link/ barbed wired fence you can catch glimpses of floating climbing "glaciers" and trampolines, fancy boats for ferrying passengers, more than two dozen new jet skis, and lots of other big-kid water toys. I met one North American woman working in Haiti who received special permission to meet up with some cruising family members. She said that the bartender admitted that he was not Haitian at all...but rather a company employee who stayed out of site on the cruise ship until they arrived in port where his job is to pose as a native. I suppose it would be tragic if someone had to deal with slightly accented English when ordering a rum punch. It makes me wonder if foreign investors think the only way to make Haiti attractive to tourists is by taking away anything authentically Haitian...that would be a real tragedy.
During our visit to the Labadi area in April, my friend G and I listened to the sound of construction crews working through the night on a barge located in the middle of the bay. The owner of the hotel said they are building a second pier so RC can bring two boats into port on the same day. According to this article in yesterday's Miami Herald online, it's actually a 55 million dollar investment that also includes a roller coaster and beachfront expansion. USAID is giving money for training of tour guides and The Clinton Initiative is trying to build private sector support by rallying business leaders in South Florida.
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