RCCL Plans New Haiti School, New Tour

Richard Fain, chairman and CEO or Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., and Adam Goldstein, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, last month returned to Haiti for the first time since October. Joining them was Minister of Tourism Patrick Delatour, who is one of President Clinton’s top advisers in Haiti; Clinton is a U.N. special envoy to the nation.

In his blog, Goldstein said the executives wanted to visit the local management team and “express our support for our people and their country.” Secondly, he wrote, Fain wants to explore building a school. Goldstein said he also visited the Citadelle, the largest fort in the Americas built in the 1800s on top of a 3,000-foot mountain. He said he wanted to figure how Royal Caribbean guests can visit the site when the ships call at Labadee.

“The tour to the Citadelle would be an all-day affair with a lot of travel logistics,” Goldstein wrote. “The decision to take the tour would be a decision to forego the normal Labadee experience. Whenever this tour gets going it will be in the category of adventure tour with a relatively high (more than $100 per person) price point. The site needs to be enhanced from a safety standpoint before we could consider bringing our guests there. With the right funding from international donors and a concentrated effort to get the site ready, it could be ready within a few months. But until work actually begins, there is no way to project when this will happen. We are determined that it will eventually happen.”

Goldstein also said Labadee “looked great and was in full stride” following repairs and upgrades after the earthquake.