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Company touting Haiti for vacations

MIAMI (AP) ? Imagine gazing at the Caribbean's turquoise waters from a hammock strung between two palm trees. The hotel chefs who offered either fresh lobster or shrimp for dinner will soon bring the dishes to the beach. Cocktails are quickly refreshed.

An ideal, relaxing vacation ? in Haiti.

That's the image a South Florida company wants travelers to have in mind.

"Visit Haiti. Don't listen to what you see on the news," says Wilfrid Belfort of MWM & Associates in North Miami Beach, which posts details of the trips at www.tohaiti.com. "Visit Haiti, because you are the only one who can save Haiti right now."

Recent news from Haiti does not promise relaxation: Gang violence and kidnappings have surged in the capital of the Western hemisphere's poorest country.

But Belfort's Haitian-American-owned company sees increasing tourism as Haiti's best chance to improve its crippled economy and finally achieve political stability ? a plan Haiti's new president also proposed at a Florida tourism conference in June.

Just 112,000 tourists visited Haiti last year, while 4 million came to its Hispaniola neighbor, the Dominican Republic, President Rene Preval said at the conference hosted by MWM.

The company offers all-inclusive, four-day getaway packages to Cap-Haitien on Haiti's north coast, Cotes des Arcadins on the central coast and Jacmel and Ile-a-Vache in the south. One upcoming package goes for $499 per person including airfare.

Ads promoting a "Secret Paradise" in Haitian-American media and on Miami billboards aren't aimed at adventure tourists or travelers participating in community service. MWM arranges tours for traditional beachgoers expecting room service, lounge chairs and drinks with umbrellas; the trips also include guided sightseeing and nighttime dancing.

Theonne Armand's hotel room balcony overlooked the beach in Jacmel and tour guides introduced her to local artists creating masks for upcoming carnival celebrations when she joined an MWM tour in January. She was born in Saint-Marc, Haiti, but had never traveled to the southern coast.

"Everything worked out good, price-wise and the place and the accommodations," said Armand, a 50-year-old nurse who now lives in Loxahatchee. "I felt it was very, very safe. Everything you hear is not happening in Jacmel. It's quiet."

But an unstable country dotted with exclusive resorts does not appeal to Kevin Danaher of San Francisco-based Global Exchange, which stopped offering its immersion tours to Haiti after former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster in 2004.

"We're looking forward to going back when it's safe," Danaher said. "We don't believe in enclave tourism, because it doesn't show people what the country is really like."

Most tourists will likely heed a U.S. State Department warning discouraging travel to the Caribbean nation. More than 50 Americans, including children, have been kidnapped in Haiti in the past year, the agency says.