Michelle Loubon

Lured by ru­ins of Sans Souci at Milot and the Citadel Fortress, tourists flock to the city of Cap-Hai­tien, on Haiti's north coast. They make the trek past moun­tain­ous scenic land­scapes to "ile de l'amour" (is­land of love) at Ile-a-vache. In fact, Haiti Prime Min­is­ter Lau­rent Lamothe told Caribbean Jour­nal in an in­ter­view in De­cem­ber it has high hopes for the tourism po­ten­tial of pic­turesque Ile a Vache.

But the Hait­ian tourism in­dus­try is still un­der­de­vel­oped. In the af­ter­math of the earth­quake which rocked Port-au-Prince on Jan­u­ary 10, 2010, there is still more work to be done through­out Haiti. Michel Pre­sume, di­recteur de la Di­vi­sion Ba­ti­ment Pub­lic, said in­fra­struc­ture like wa­ter, san­i­ta­tion and drainage was ur­gent­ly need­ed to boost Haiti's tourism in­dus­try.

Asked about the progress of tourism, Pre­sume said, "There is the need for bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture. Tourism and in­fra­struc­ture go hand in hand. There is the need for wa­ter and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions."

He iden­ti­fied a project aimed at pro­vid­ing in­fra­struc­ture like wa­ter and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions at Jacmel. Jacmel is fa­mous­ly dubbed the art Cap­i­tal of the Caribbean. Trails fenced with man­go and the fa­mous­ly de­li­cious apri­cot en­dem­ic to His­pan­io­la lead to Bassin Bleue wa­ter­fall. Apart from wa­ter which is of­ten sourced from wells, there is the need for ad­e­quate In­ter­net and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

"The NAT­COM com­pa­ny is pro­vid­ing more than 3,000 kilo­me­tres of fi­bre op­tics which would be de­ployed all over the coun­try. There are plans to in­tro­duce telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to host a tele­con­fer­ence from any­where in Haiti. There are plans to bring good qual­i­ty to ho­tels and equip them with state-of-the art tech­nol­o­gy," added Pre­sume.

Among the ho­tels that were re­cent­ly up­grad­ed in­clud­ed five star Roy­al Oa­sis, man­aged by the Span­ish firm Oc­ci­den­tal and Ki­nam at sub­urb Petion-Ville and Ho­tel Kanube. Best West­ern Haiti is slat­ed to open soon and will add an­oth­er 600 new rooms to Haiti's ho­tel stock.

Pri­or­i­ty projects

Haiti Tourism Min­is­ter Stephanie Ville­drouin re­cent­ly un­veiled a se­ries of pri­or­i­ty projects which are in­tend­ed to boost tourism in 2013. She al­so shared plans to start re­brand­ing Haiti's tourism im­age. The is­land in­tro­duced a new lo­go and ad cam­paign–"Ex­pe­ri­ence It."

She not­ed the chal­lenge was for Haiti to start con­vert­ing the new cam­paign in­to more vis­i­tors. In a state­ment, she said, "The task is daunt­ing and we recog­nise the mag­ni­tude of the chal­lenges. How­ev­er, we be­lieve the dawn of pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty be­gins to shine on the face of this coun­try we cher­ish and love so much."

Boost­ing Haiti in 2013

�2 Po­ten­tial agree­ments with Delta, Air France and Air Transat for the pro­mo­tion of tourism pack­ages. In fact, Cana­da's Transat has al­ready an­nounced plans to of­fer va­ca­tion pack­ages to Haiti.

�2 Pro­mot­ing Haiti as a des­ti­na­tion at tourism fairs in New York, Mon­tre­al, Guade­loupe and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. (Guade­loupe, along with Mar­tinique, has been of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est as well as fel­low Fran­coph­o­ne is­lands. In late 2012, Haiti brought over a group of trav­el agents from Guade­loupe in a bid to bring more busi­ness from the French de­part­ments.

�2 Open­ing a tourism train­ing in­sti­tute in Les Cayes.

�2 Ad­di­tion­al work on air­port con­struc­tion in Les Cayes and Ile a Vache.

�2 Plans to open a "pro­fes­sion­al cui­sine lab­o­ra­to­ry" with a restau­rant com­po­nent in the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince. It's part of a push by the Min­istry to pro­mote Haiti's cui­sine–the lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion was the launch of a se­ries of videos fo­cus­ing on Haiti's gas­tron­o­my by world-renowned chef Jose An­dres. He will vis­it Haiti for more film­ing work this year.

�2 Im­ple­ment a "tourist po­lice" as well, os­ten­si­bly to pro­tect some of Haiti's more pop­u­lar tourism ar­eas.