PHOTO: A Haitian artist. (Photo courtesy Oana Dragan, G Adventures)
G Adventures recently rolled out a series of five departures of a new escorted tour to Haiti beginning in February 2015. The adventure operator is positioning Haiti as a cultural destination with natural attractions and opportunities for adventure.
Highlights include Citadelle Laferrière, a UNESCO-designated mountaintop fortress at Cap-Haïtien; a tour of a rum distillery; lessons in making the local kasav flat bread; a meeting with a voodoo priest; shopping for voodoo artifacts at the Iron Market; a visit to the Art Creation Foundation for Children, which helps at-risk youth learn artistic skills; swimming at the Bassin-Bleu pools; and caving in the Marie-Jeanne cave.
TravelPulse interviewed Jeff Russill, VP of Innovation at G Adventures, about what prompted the company's latest move.
TravelPulse: So G Adventures is going into Haiti for the first time. How did this come about?
Jeff Russill: We were approached by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which had a tourism development project for the government of Haiti. So they asked us to come in on a consulting level about where they should be putting their money. Basically it was a tourism potential in Haiti consulting gig. We've worked with the IDB before on community tourism projects throughout Latin America, so they are very familiar with us.
TP: What did you learn? Were you surprised?
JR: Yeah, more than surprised. Going back a few years, after the earthquake in Haiti, the owner of our company, Bruce Poon Tip, was on a panel about rebuilding Haiti down in Haiti with all the government agencies and nongovernment agencies from around the world. And he bluntly said, 'Don't look to tourism to rebuild Haiti because you need demand first. Tourism can be purposed for wealth distribution and an economic catalyst, but not if it's somewhere nobody wants to go.'
At the time there was absolute zero demand for Haiti as a tourism destination. Five years down the road when the IDBG came to us and said, 'Look, the ministry is trying to figure out where they should put their money. The government's trying to figure out if they should put it into tourism or not. Can you help us with the tourism potential?'
I said, 'Sure, but you have to be OK with me coming back and saying there isn't much."
And they said, 'Yeah, we want to know that. We want to know actually what the potential is.' So we did a lot of market research up here. We went down for a couple of weeks and explored the country. And it was about halfway through that I looked over at my colleagues and said, 'Not only am I going to say there's potential, but we're building a trip. I want to be the first guys running trips here. We'll create the demand. We'll start the demand. We'll educate the customer, because this is a great place. People should be coming.'
So I was very surprised, to answer the original question. It took me until I got down there. I was quite surprised by how fantastic a destination it was, but also from an infrastructure point of view that it had a lot more than I thought. And the reason is that it's been supporting nongovernment agencies and aid workers for decades. And the UN doesn't put their people in ramshackle places. You need to have proper hotels, proper hygiene, there is a lot of inspection. The World Health Organization is there, the UN, every branch of the UN is there I think. So there have been a lot of foreign nationals working in Haiti for decades. So all the hotels and infrastructure you need to run tours is already there.
G Adventures Introduces Haiti from G Adventures on Vimeo.
TP:What did you learn from your market research?
JR: That's what I do anyways. We're always launching new products in the market. We launch about 200 new products a year. So that's what I and my team do anyway. Because we're more like a niche adventure travel company, it's one thing when market research says people should be going to Europe, everybody knows that. Our job is to overturn what the next place will be, whether it's Nicaragua or the Philippines, and be there first.
The best place to start for that is the backpackers. When the backpackers were going through Southeast Asia and Peru and Central America 25 years ago, 10 years later everybody followed. But that is actually compacted. That's like a two-year thing now and that's because of social media and the Web. From a destination being discovered by the backpackers and taking off is really tight now. So it's up to us to be in there first. We are really invested in Colombia right now and coming up with a lot of new product this year because we see that that's at that exact tipping point. The backpackers have been going back to Colombia for about five or six years. That's all going to tip now into mainstream tourism kicking back in in Colombia.
Haiti's a little bit early on that. So we're going in a little earlier than we normally would, but it's because we see something pretty special there. There are backpackers there. And there are people talking on all the message boards on Lonely Planet and even on Twitter and Facebook. There are people going and exploring and they're the type of people who are attracted to being there first and being in the early adopters and really getting off the beaten path. Those people will always come first in a destination. So we saw the beginning of demand.
TP: So in your market research you look at Twitter and Facebook and … ?
JR: We use all the social sites, whether it's Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook. We even look at things like Google search. We look at Google search levels around the world, based on whether they're with the words 'tours' or 'travel' or 'vacations,' we've got a bunch of terms and we can see how they rise. There is our own site. We've managed to site search on our own website and see where people are coming from and searching. When we see a country going up every year we know more and more people are looking at our site, that's probably a good indication they are looking at other sites as well for that destination. We saw that with Colombia over the last couple of years. It just keeps going up and up as a keyword search.
You can start seeing action on TripAdvisor on things because it's such a chat room now basically. Another big one is Lonely Planet Thorntree, it's the home of a lot of backpackers.
[BLURB]"...we're going in a little earlier than we normally would, but it's because we see something pretty special there."[/BLURB]
TP:Right after the earthquake Bruce said there was no demand at all, right?
JR: Yes, because it had just gone through that and the only thing in people's minds right then was 100,000 or more people dying. It was way too soon.
TP:What was Haiti's tourism like before the earthquake?
JR: It was actually pretty low, and it was because of a really corrupt government and a lot of civil unrest that was going on. The government has really stabilized now in terms of who's in charge and it being a progressive government trying to do good things, whereas before they had Baby Doc Duvalier and they had years of these kinds of fascist governments that were just stealing money. That's why the country is so poor, because of all the corruption. In the '60s Haiti was a cool tourism spot. If you go way back it was like Cuba back then. And that completely crashed through civil unrest and the country having no infrastructure. That's changed now.
TP: You used Cuba as a positive comparison? Are you talking about the infrastructure?
JR: Well, this is the thing that surprised me about Haiti is that it actually does have infrastructure. We have tours all throughout Cuba and there's not actually a ton of infrastructure once you get off the beach, to be honest. There's a lot of infrastructure for beach tourism, but once we get out of Havana on our trips there actually isn't a lot of great hotels.
What I meant by referring to Cuba was that back in the day, Batista days, before communism in Cuba, it was a great spot for American tourism. People used to go down, the casinos were down there, and Haiti was in that group as well. People used to go down. But that was a long time ago. And then it just went downhill with 30 years of corrupt dictatorships. And then the earthquake. So they've had a bad time for a while trying to attract tourism.
TP:So with Haiti you will be appealing to your more adventurous customers?
JR: Yes. One of the things I've been saying is it's not a beach destination. It's not, "Hey we were going to go to the Dominican Republic, but let's go to Haiti." I don't think they are ready for that. To me it's more … Haiti could be surrounded by cliffs and it would still be a great destination. It's not a beach destination; it's a cultural destination. So what you're going to get is that customer who really wants to get there first, that early adopter customer, the type of person who's looking to go to Colombia now or Nicaragua. They've been to 50 countries and they want to know what the cool next off-the-beaten-path destination is. Haiti's probably a bit behind those as well, but we're trying to get in really early on it.
We've sold our first trip so that's a good sign.
TP:What are the top attractions that you'll incorporate into your trip?
JR: The top attraction is a UNESCO World Heritage site there. There's not that many of those in the Caribbean. It's Citadelle Laferrière. It's an old fort. So that's definitely an interesting one. Down in the south you get a lot of more natural attractions. There's an amazing cave system called Grott Marie-Jeanne. I've done quite a bit of caving around the world and that was a really great experience. There's a lot of swimholes and waterfalls you have to hike into, like Bassin-Bleu.
But those aside, I think it's a cultural destination. It has a unique culture. That's something that does destinations well. If you look at a Jamaica and a Cuba, compared to other areas in the Caribbean, they have these stand-out cultures. Haiti's got creole culture with voodoo involved, and that's their own thing that no one else has. And I think that's attractive to people, to go to places that kind of speak their own language with their own food and own traditions. I found that part fascinating.
What comes out of that is probably the most vibrant art scene I've ever seen in a country. For a country so small it's a country of artists. It was something I had to learn by going down. I didn't know it in advance. There's a real tradition of mosaics and papier mache and all that down there. But now there's this modern urban sculpture movement that's come out of Port au Prince, and they're showing in galleries in London and New York now. I didn't even know that. It came out of the earthquake, out of the rubble of the earthquake and turning that into sculpture. There are hundreds of these communities of artists all over Port au Prince that are working on it. It's pretty fascinating.
TP: What would your concluding message be to our readers?
JR: People should get there first. If you really want to have a great experience, it's hard to find places that have not changed because of tourism. And sometimes that change is for the better. But to really go to a place where there is no one there to sell you something. There is no one there trying to get you to buy their goods. It's a unique experience right now.
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter.
Topics From This Article to Explore
