Haiti's only US-branded hotel is closing. It once opened with high-profile guests

It was just 10 years ago.

Former President Bill Clinton, standing in the scorching Haitian sun next to the pool of Haiti’s newest internationally branded hotel, looked around the foliage-lined courtyard and smiled.

There were toasts, there was chatter — and there was hope. As Haiti’s then-president Michel Martelly welcomed Clinton and U.S. actor-turned-humanitarian-activist Sean Penn hobnobbed with the invitation-only crowd that included some of the 1,100 skilled Haitians who built Haiti’s first Marriott Hotel from the ground up, the former U.S. president reflected on how the new 11-story, $45 million structure represented more than just bricks and mortar.

It was the culmination of an ask from three years earlier when Clinton, long interested in Haiti’s tourism potential after honeymooning there in the 1970s, approached the country’s largest private sector investor, Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, and asked him to expand his commitment beyond mobile phones to help the country.

“I want to thank Marriott for more than the hotel, more than the jobs, more than the training, more than the income,” Clinton said at the time. “I want to thank them for giving all of you the chance to show the real Haiti to the world that will come to this hotel.”

Recently, the 175-room Marriott, which was supposed to help bring much-needed jobs and tourism to Haiti, announced the end of its run. It comes not only a decade after it was constructed by O’Brien’s Digicel Group, but a year after Haiti’s tumultuous economic outlook also forced Haiti’s single largest private investor to cede control as chairman of the cell phone giant to new shareholders after a lengthy debt restructuring process.

“We can confirm that the Marriott Port-au-Prince Hotel will suspend operations under the Marriott brand flag as of April 30th,” Diego Thomas, Marriott International’s senior manager for Caribbean and Latin America, said in a statement to the Miami Herald. “The owner company and Marriott International continue to discuss next steps.”

The decision by Marriott and the new shareholders of Digicel Group marks the second time this month that a symbol of Haiti’s reconstruction after its devastating 2010 earthquake has had to close because of the unprecedented gang violence that has left many private businesses, schools and hospitals with no choice but to shutter their doors. And it’s the second time in weeks that Haiti’s post-quake tourism market, already hit by the ongoing Federal Aviation Administration ban over U.S. commercial flights landing in Port-au-Prince, was yet again hit with a major blow.

Earlier this month, Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which operates a private destination off the coast of northern Haiti, announced a suspension of its Labadee port stop following the government’s decision to declare a country-wide state of emergency over the violence by a powerful gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm, Living Together. In recent days, the operators of the University Hospital of Mirebalais in central Haiti circulated an internal note telling staff that the doors of the $24 million hospital, which opened in 2013, will remain closed “until further notice.” The town was taken over this month by members of Viv Ansanm, which have also been carrying out simultaneous deadly attacks in metropolitan Port-au-Prince.

In just a decade the Marriott Hotel went from a promise of Haiti’s future to a remnant of its past, as the country’s armed gangs continue to wreak economic damage.

“The country is becoming more isolated every day,” said Evans Paul, who as prime minister at the time attended the hotel’s February 2015 opening. “Airports are closed. Borders are closed. The National Palace is closed. The Marriott Hotel is closed; the state is on the run. People are angry. We need a national conscience to fight divisions, to bring solutions.”

Maarten Boute, the former CEO of Digicel Haiti, whose towering headquarters is next door to the Marriott, said the announcement of the hotel’s closing “was very sad news to hear, especially having experienced, first hand, all the efforts put into bringing a brand like Marriott to Haiti and those put in subsequently, to build and maintain such a high quality product.

“I particularly feel for the hundreds of the employees that worked tirelessly in very difficult conditions and now find themselves without a job,” he said. “I also feel sad for Haiti and Port-au-Prince, as it could take decades to bring any such large brand back.”

This is not the first time the country has seen the loss of an internationally branded hotel, but it is the first time the closure comes amid a collapse in which the capital, already largely under the control of young men and boys armed with heavy automatic weapons, could find itself completely taken over at any moment.

In 1998, the Holiday Inn left Haiti as political turmoil caused the economy to collapse. The building was taken over by the government. But in a sign of how badly the situation has deteriorated in just a few months, Haiti’s caretaker government not been able to move into the former hotel, and has had to relocate agencies and ministries further up the hillside to Pétion-Ville.

A plus to a liability

A favorite of some U.S. journalists and visiting members of the Haitian diaspora, the hotel at its height boasted hundreds of jobs, and stood out for its emphasis on the use of local products, from soap to coffee. Its lobby was decorated with vibrant Vodou flags and other local artwork, and it was among a wave of international brands investing in Haiti’s growing tourism scene after the earthquake.

Back then, its location, not far from the Champ-de-Mars public square across from the National Palace and National Pantheon Museum, was seen as a plus. Today it has become a liability as gangs seek to control the entire capital by taking over strategic neighborhoods near the hotel’s Turgeau address.

The gangs are quickly encroaching into strategic neighborhoods where key telecom and electricity installations are at risk of a takeover. Marriott, for example is within walking distance of the Pacot neighborhood, where armed groups recently set fire to private homes. Also nearby is the headquarters of Haiti’s second mobile provider, Natcom.

On Wednesday as gangs continued to try to take control of the rest of Port-au-Prince, several members of a so-called self-defense brigade from nearby Canape-Vert and security forces were killed after gang members set a trap.

The deaths were confirmed in a note from the Transitional Presidential Council, which on Friday marked a year in office, but did not provide any details. The Haiti National Police later said they had killed gang members in Pacot, but like the presidential council, did not provide details.