Haiti has ambitions to become a vacation destination

In 1985 Didier Boulard set sail from France for Ile-a-Vache, an island of green hills and pristine blue water about 10km off Haiti's southern coast, which the British pirate Henry Morgan once used as a refuge.

"It was one of the few virgin spots in the Antilles," he says. He stayed to open one of the island's two small hotels, Port Morgan, with two dozen rooms overlooking the bay of Caille Coq. "Thirty years later, it is the last virgin spot this side of the Caribbean."

Today, Ile-a-Vache is part of a tourism master plan mainly focused on the southern coast. It stretches west from Jacmel, a city with French colonial architecture, to Ile-a-Vache via Cotes-de-Fer, a pristine beach on the mainland with potential for 20,000 hotel rooms, a golf course and an airport, the government says.

"We have Jacmel that will attract cultural tourism and Ile-a-Vache which will be more high-end. And, because nature is so good, in between we have 26km of beaches where we need to create the grand tourism destination, which will be the revenue generator," says Stephanie Villedrouin, Haiti's tourism minister.

She estimates $350m is needed in private-public partnerships to develop the country's leisure industry, including infrastructure such as airports, bridges and utilities. The first phase, which in some cases offers a 15-year tax-free investment, would create almost 14,000 jobs.

In 2013, Haiti entered the World Economic Forum's travel and competitiveness ranking. "The first task is to keep positioning Haiti as a tourism destination, something that did not exist," adds Ms Villedrouin.

So far the Inter-American Development Bank has agreed to lend $36m to the Haitian government to develop tourism. A handful of local and international hotel investors are considering plans, says Ms Villedrouin, including Spain's Decameron, US-based Dakia Global in Ile-a-Vache, and Dominican Republic's Grupo Punta Cana which is eyeing Cotes-de-Fer. Spain's Melia and Riu Hotels have also been in talks.

Haiti, known as "the pearl of the Antilles", was once a popular tourist destination. Mick Jagger and Jackie Onassis have stayed at the Oloffson Hotel in Port-au-Prince and visitors flocked to the Citadelle Laferriere, a mountaintop fortress, which is a Unesco world heritage site.

But political turmoil, violence, epidemics and natural disasters have held back the industry. Meanwhile the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and even Communist-run Cuba made inroads into a market that attracts 22m visitors to the Caribbean.

"We want to regain the place we lost. For the first time in history, we have a proper plan in place," says Ms Villedrouin. The government expects the number of tourist rooms to rise from 9,500 to 13,000 in the next three years. Prospective developments include Ile de la Tortue, a former pirate enclave off the northern coast.

In the past two years, the country has welcomed more than 1m tourists, although 60 per cent came on cruise ships to the northern port of Labadie, an enclave criticised for its minimal links to the local economy aside from a tax of $10 a head. Cruise ships will not be allowed to anchor along the south coast.

<

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

In the capital, Digicel, the mobile carrier, has invested $45m in a luxury hotel operated by Marriott. The family-owned Hotel Kinam, in the upscale area of Petion-ville, has put $20m into a complex of bars, shops, rooms and condos. Nearby, Mr Acra, also a shareholder of hotel El Rancho, says an $80m expansion is under way.

But Haiti's ambitious tourist plan has met some resistance. When the government announced the investment on Ile-a-Vache, some farmers protested.

Jean Matulnes Lamy, president of the local farmers' association, Kopi, says: "The situation is tense, because they want a reserve here exclusively for tourism development. We cannot develop Ile-a-Vache by bypassing tourism, but it has to be tourism development with the people and for the people."

The Haitian government says it is investing $150m in social infrastructure spending that will support tourism.

In Ile-a-Vache money has been allocated for drilling for fresh water, electricity generation, vocational training, a hospital, a radio station, community farms and centres. Some works are completed. Much of these funds went to the island's main road and a new airport with the capacity to accommodate Boeing 737 aircraft.

Ms Villedrouin says: "We have an organised and diversified plan for tourists to mingle with locals, have more real experiences, and where we are taking into account social infrastructure, the integration of communities."

On his wooden barge, fisherman Miguelitte Rice says more tourism will mean more business - even if he may move further away as projects advance along the revamped beachfront of Jacmel. That maybe the price for development, he says. "If it spills over, it'll be good and I'll be happy. We must wait and see."

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation