Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. will suspend visits to its private resort in Haiti at a time when gang violence and lawlessness grip the nation’s capital.
Eight cruises through March 18 will cancel stops in Labadee, a paradisiacal beach located on the northern coast of Haiti. The company reported in a statement that it is making the adjustments temporarily “with great caution”.
“The safety of our guests, crew and communities we visit are our top priority”said the Miami-based company. Their teams are “closely monitoring the evolution of the situation in Haiti”.
Royal Caribbean rarely closes the popular resort that features jet skis, zip lines and nature walks for passengers on its luxury cruise ships. Even after the 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, Labadee remained open and the company’s ships were used to deliver necessary aid.
The private peninsula is about a six-hour drive from the capital, Port-au-Prince, which has been overrun by gangs in recent weeks, forcing the United States to evacuate much of its embassy and prompting the resignation of Haiti’s prime minister. . The United Nations estimates that approximately half of the population suffers from hunger in this nation, the poorest in the hemisphere.
The closure of Labadee is a test of Royal Caribbean’s strategy to focus more on the Caribbean region due to wars and turmoil in other parts of the world. The company and other cruise operators have been forced to cancel or divert trips to St. Petersburg, Israel and the Red Sea, leading to reductions in European sailings.
Caribbean cruises currently represent around 55% of Royal Caribbean’s passenger capacity.
The company did not specify whether trips that were supposed to stop in Labadee will be redirected to another area. The shipping company also stops in Puerto Plata, in the Dominican Republic.
“Cruise lines have to constantly adapt to weather conditions, geopolitical risks and, obviously, for health reasons”said Jody Lurie, cruise analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “Cruise lines have learned to be agile. They can always dock somewhere else, as long as there is somewhere else to dock”.
Source: Gestion
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