Fantasy Island: Royal Caribbean parcels off a piece of Haiti - Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, Labadee, Haiti

Progressive, The, August, 1997 by Catherine Orenstein

Labadee is a model of the growing industry of immaculate tourism: luxurious forays by Americans and Europeans into secluded provinces of the Third World, with little or no economic impact. The sites serve as pleasant and unobtrusive backdrops which, by design or coincidence, are often anonymous. And the ports-of-call rarely benefit as much from the deal as do the mega corporations that market and merchandise their shores. Proponents of large-scale tourism argue that resorts and cruise ships bring in much-needed foreign exchange. The World Tourism Organization estimates a global average input of $679 for each tourist's arrival. And the World Travel and Tourism Council in London calculates that international tourism created jobs for one in ten workers on the globe in 1995 and generated 23 percent of total employment in the Caribbean. But perhaps the more salient issue has been who controls the market and who pockets the money.

In 1989, the trend in marketing all-inclusive sites in the Caribbean spurred a four-year battle between Caribbean hoteliers and the cruise lines. The battle ended in 1993 when the Caribbean Hotel Association recommended increased regulation of the cruise industry and higher head taxes. Florida's Caribbean Cruise Association, representing fourteen cruise lines including Royal Caribbean, responded by suspending its association with the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

Long-time hotelier Suzanne Seitz, an American who came to Haiti in the 1960s, insists that if Haiti wants to turn things around, it will have to call Royal Caribbean's bluff, and celebrate its cultural heritage rather than disguising it.

It worked before, Seitz points out. In the 1960s, Haiti attracted the rich, the famous, and the adventurous. Guests like Mick Jagger, Ali MacGraw, Kurt Vonnegut, and Harlem dance legend Katherine Dunham caroused Haitian hideaways like Dunham's sprawling hammock-slung voodoo temple at Habitation Le Clerc, established on the land of Napoleon's brother-in-law; or the Hotel Oloffson, back then the Grand Hotel Oloffson, which Seitz and her husband ran for nearly twenty years. Graham Greene set his novel The Comedians there (Richard Burton played Seitz's husband in the movie) and they once kept alligators in the pool. "That," says Seitz, "was no anonymous Love Boat destination." Seitz now consults with the Ministry of Tourism to promote Haiti's local scene.

Others are less optimistic about the potential of resort tourism to broaden out into the local economy. They suggest small-scale alternatives including ecotourism, study-groups, adventure tours, and retirement communities. Camille Chalmers, head of Haiti's Platform for Alternative Economic Development, sees today's tourist as an ambassador of cultural imperialism. He says that he would opt for no tourism at all over what Haiti has now. At the very least. Chalmers says, "we should make our culture, our history. the selling point of tourism. We have a unique history -- the site of a slave revolution that defeated Napoleon's army and became the globe's first black republic."