Haiti-Caribbean News Network reports that Haiti will require Royal Caribbean cruise passenger to pay an extra two dollars to visit the cruise line’s "private destination" in Labadee.
The extra money, to be paid by the cruise passengers and not the cruise line, is intended to fund social projects benefiting the local community.
Effective March 15, 2015, cruise passenger will pay $12 a piece instead of the $10 being paid now.
Royal Caribbean has invested virtually nothing into the local community over the past 20 years. Royal Caribbean built a modest little school four years ago, which it named after itself. The school was built using materials donated by third parties and cost only around $425,000.
With around 600,000 cruise passengers visiting Labadee a year, that turns out to be only a little over seventy cents a person for the school. The cruise line has been criticized for erecting a barb-wire fence around the resort to keep the Haitians out (photo right), and not providing food for the children at the school or transportation to transport the children safely there.
On the other hand, Royal Caribbean has spent tens of millions of dollars in labadee building a deep water port, a huge zip-line and other improvements for its passengers.
Haiti’s Prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, announced last month that he agreed to permit Carnival to develop the island of Tortuga in a deal that sounds like the Royal Caribbean-Haiti deal in Labadee.
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Photo Credit: Rudbeckia Flickr Photostream "A Haitian view of Labadee"