The brouhaha that erupted a couple of years ago about the “questionable taste” of Royal Caribbean bringing its passengers to a leased beach at Labadee (aka Labadie), on Haiti‘s north coast, is a good example of the inevitable awkwardness in overlaying leisure tourism from generally wealthy countries onto an impoverished and shattered country where people are suffering and starving right outside gated resorts. For example, more than 20 percent of respondents to a CruiseCritic.com poll said that in the wake of the recent catastrophe they felt it was inappropriate to be enjoying themselves on the beach with such devastation and deprivation beyond the fence. But consider: this juxtaposition is...

read complete post