Home »

Imagine a Relaxing Getaway -- In Haiti

MIAMI -- 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 when booking their next Caribbean getaway.

"Visit Haiti. Don't listen to what you see on the news," says Wilfrid Belfort of MWM & Associates in North Miami Beach. "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.

Belfort is asking travelers to look beyond the problems in Port-au-Prince and give the rest of the country a chance. His

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 Ilea-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."

Belfort hopes increasing tourism will attract internationally known investors such as Royal Caribbean Cruises, which brings cruise ship tourists on day trips to its private Labadie Beach in northern Haiti.

"If we had five Labadies, that would make change in Haiti," Belfort said.

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 offer `Reality Tours,' but reality includes everything short of people getting killed," Danaher said. "We're looking forward to going back when it's safe. We don't believe in enclave tourism, because it doesn't show people what the country is really like."

Most tourists likely heed the 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, according to the state department.

Recent posts in an online forum hosted by travel guide publisher Lonely Planet advise against visiting Haiti, listing food poisoning among the risks. "Just don't go!" one says.

The warnings unfairly paint Haiti as the only victim of crime and poverty in the Caribbean, said Pierre Chauvet, president of Agence Citadelle, a Port-auPrince travel agency his father opened in 1946.

"It's like saying problems in Miami mean one shouldn't go to Florida. In Jamaica, not everybody goes to downtown Kingston -- everybody goes to Montego Bay," Chauvet said by phone from Port-au-Prince.

Despite a recent boost from Japanese and Taiwanese tour groups booking cultural excursions in Haiti, Agence Citadelle has focused on selling airline tickets for travel out of the country, he said.

"We've had to push the ticketing side of the business because of the downfall of Haiti's tourism," Chauvet said. "There are no tourists to Haiti, period, because of the political turmoils we have experienced for the past

20 years."

Tourists who like to visit the Caribbean because of its proximity and safe reputation cannot get travel insurance for trips to Haiti because of the ongoing unrest in Port-au-Prince, where the main airport is located, said Priscilla Myers, a McLean, Va., travel agent and member of the American Society of Travel Agents.

"Flying through Port-au-Prince is still risky. It's like going to the jail to get to Miami Beach, and who wants to go through jail to get to Miami Beach? That's the scenario they have there. They don't want to end up in an airport and have a mob attack them," Myers said.

Few airlines schedule flights into Port-au-Prince, and transportation within Haiti is also a challenge; Preval has said the country needs new roads to support tourism. MWM flies its tour groups from the capital to the coastal resorts.