Haiti tourism has grown by 17% last year, and has registered one of the fastest growth rates in the Caribbean, according to the 2013 statistics released by the Caribbean Tourism Organization last month.

Almost 300,000 tourists visited Haiti last year (299,646 to be exact). The growth rate was 10% in winter, and 23.9% in the summer time. This is the second fastest growth rate in the region, after Montserrat (36.3% growth, but only 6,132 tourist visits).

Although the Haiti tourism growth rate is impressive, it is still far from receiving the number of tourists that its neighbor Dominican Republic gets (4.7 million last year), Cuba (2.9 million), Jamaica (2 million), or Bahamas (1.1 million). These are the most visited countries in the region, along with Puerto Rico (1.2 million arrivals in 2013).

Haiti also increased the number of its Cruise Passenger by 5% last year. Over 640,000 Cruise tourists stopped by Haiti’s shores.

Steps forward

Lately, Haiti took a few more steps ahead in increasing its tourism industry. It was featured as a tourist destination on nearly 30 pages of the special issue of Conde Nast Traveler Spanish edition, and later in the Russian edition of the same magazine.

This year, the Haiti Tourism Ministry plans to represent Haiti in 14 international tourism fairs, including ITB Berlin that took place on March 5-9, 2014. This is one of the biggest international tourism fairs that attract over 10,000 exhibitors and 180,000 visitors.