28455: Hermantin(News)Selling Haiti as a tourism mecca (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Selling Haiti as a tourism mecca


By Toni Marshall
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

June 11, 2006


They boarded a plane, took a boat and relaxed on a tiny island with thatch hut 
bungalows, tropical drinks, clean sand and turquoise waters.

It wasn't Puerto Rico or Hawaii or Aruba.

It was Haiti.

"We want to go there and buy land and retire. This is how wonderful an 
experience we had," said Kafe-Pascal Garoute, an artist and musician from 
Lauderhill. She and her husband, Christian "Kristo" Nicholas, recently returned 
from vacationing on the island.

For the first time in decades, promoters are mounting a major campaign to 
market the Caribbean nation to the United States as a vacation destination, 
tourism insiders said.

There's already one billboard in Broward County and two in Miami-Dade that 
advertise the island as a tourist spot.

MWM & Associates, a privately owned Miami-based promoter, hopes its billboards 
and sponsorship of a weekend conference -- the Second Annual Haiti Tourism and 
Economic Development Summit in Miami Beach starting June 23 -- will ignite more 
interest in Haiti as a vacation destination with business investment 
opportunities.

Haitian President René Préval is expected to attend the non-government 
sponsored event.

Roughly 300,000 people of Haitian heritage live in South Florida , according to 
the U.S. Census.

Haiti was known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" for centuries before a series of 
unstable governments, the proliferation of HIV and AIDS, a stinging U.S. 
embargo and rampant poverty overtook the poorest nation in the Western 
Hemisphere.

"A new generation is growing up in the United States that have no reason to go 
to Haiti if we don't prepare Haiti for their return," said Magaly Prezeau of 
MWM & Associates.

"What better way than to make Haiti their tourist destination, for students to 
go to for Spring Break and for grandmas to retire."

A billboard at Northwest 27th Avenue and Sunrise Boulevard, just west of 
Interstate 95 in Broward, shows sunny skies, a blue water beach and an inviting 
chair in contrast to the typical depiction of Haiti, where chaos looms and 
killings and anarchy appear to be an everyday thing.

Prezeau's company wants to change Haiti's negative image. They've spent 
$250,000 and plan to invest up to $1 million on advertising campaigns 
throughout the United States and Canada. Ads also will run on Haitian radio and 
television.

More than 112,000 tourists and roughly 369,000 cruise ship passengers visited 
Haiti in 2005, according to the country's Department of Tourism.

Nathalie Liautaud of the Caribbean-Central American Action -- the Washington 
D.C.-based organization that promotes economic development in the region -- 
said the majority of tourists come from the United States because of the large 
number of Haitian immigrants here.

Since 1986, Labadee on Haiti's northern coast, has served as a stop for Royal 
Caribbean Cruise Lines.

Haiti has about 1,000 hotel rooms, two international airports and some smaller 
airports.

Neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with 
Haiti, made more than $5.2 billion from tourism in 2004.

Haiti has a long way to go before it becomes like the Dominican Republic, said 
author Anthony Hattenbach, 68, who lives in Miami. His family owned two resorts 
in Haiti. He won't return because of the violence. He also fears the 
kidnappings.

His recently released book, Stars Over Haiti, tells of celebrities and others 
visiting the island to vacation at resorts like his family's and others 
throughout the late 1950s until the late 1980s. The Duvalier regimes and the 
first ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide soon followed by the 
U.S. embargo in 1991, finally took its toll on the tourism in a country 
formerly known for its nightclubs, villas, art galleries and ports. The 
capital, Port-au-Prince, erupted in violence after former leader Jean Bertrand 
Aristide left office in 2004.

Préval was elected in February and took office last month.

"Now that Haiti has gotten successfully through these elections, there seems to 
be at least now a reduction in the violence" said Susan Purcell, an expert in 
Haitian affairs at the University of Miami.

"Before the election, you didn't know whether the mobs would take to the 
streets or whether the turnout would be a fiasco."

The U.S. Department of State continues to issue warnings to individuals 
traveling to Haiti. Their Web site, www.state.gov, urges U.S. citizens to 
exercise caution and warns of kidnappings, spontaneous demonstrations and 
violent confrontations between armed groups.

"I don't think [the warning] is valid anymore," said Ralph Latortue, vice 
consul general for the Haitian consulate in Miami. "There were some kidnappings 
in Port-au-Prince, but the rest of the country has been secure."

Also, in early 2005 Haiti repaid its arrears to the World Bank putting it on 
better footing to receive loans; recently the country was readmitted to the 
15-nation Caribbean community known as Caricom after a more than two-year 
absence.

Meanwhile, promoters are hoping that the recent positive developments will 
encourage more visitors to see what Haiti offers.

Getting away from the capital is where the true beauty of the island lays, 
Prezeau said.

Garoute and her husband went to L'Isle a Vache, a tiny island off the coast, 
accessible only by boat. They swam in a waterfall in Saut Machurine. They 
climbed mountains and snorkeled, she said. "It was almost as if you were 
walking back in time," Garoute said.

Toni Marshall can be reached at tmarshall@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2004


Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel