Haiti hopes $160m for high-end tourism pays off

MONTROUIS, Haiti—The only leisure tourist among the UN peacekeepers, aid workers, embassy personnel and missionaries on this beach north of the Haitian capital must have been Anne Fournier.
She didn’t live or work in Haiti or pretend to help. Fournier was here for fun, travelling to Haiti for the first time with her Port-au-Prince-born husband of almost two years. The couple visited a few of his relatives but otherwise has spent their 10-day vacation seeing the historic town of Jacmel in the south, wading in a nearby waterfall and relaxing on the beach.

“You can tell that the tourism isn’t very developed yet, and that’s the big charm of it,” Fournier, 26, of Montreal, Canada, as she sipped juice from a cut-open coconut. “Everything is an adventure here.” Haitian President Michel Martelly and his administration are trying to woo Fournier and others like her as they aim high to revive the country’s long stagnant tourism industry with investments totaling more than $160 million.