Hilton Worldwide Announces First Hotel in Haiti

Progress or Exploitation?

Shrinking or widening the gap between the poor and the wealthy?

Infrastructure vs. "Suface Structure"?

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Hospitalitynet

April 11, 2014

New Hotel in Port-au-Prince Expected to Open in 2016

Hilton Worldwide today announced the signing of a management agreement with CAB, S.A. to operate the new build Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport. Scheduled to open in 2016, this new Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Haiti will introduce the Hilton Garden Inn brand to the Caribbean and debut the company's first hotel in Haiti.

"We are excited the Hilton Garden Inn brand continues to grow around the world and we are looking forward to opening in Port-au-Prince," said Adrian Kurre, global brand head, Hilton Garden Inn. "Value-conscious guests will enjoy their stay with an award-winning upscale and affordable hotel experience with superior amenities at an affordable price."

Forming part of the award-winning, mid-priced brandthat delivers high quality and value, Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport will be strategically located in the airport's industrial park area – acting as the only internationally branded hotel at the airport. The newest hotel to the airport complex will welcome travelers with on-site staff to arrange transportation from the airport to the property.

Danny Hughes, senior vice president, Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America, Hilton Worldwide said, "As tourism continues to contribute significantly to Haiti's economic development, we are thrilled to work with Dominique Carvonis, President of CAB, S.A. and her team, and play a part in this growth. With the brand's value proposition and the hotel's strategic location, we are confident the Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport will be a successful partner in the nation's capital and commercial hub."

Welcoming guests to Haiti's capital city, the Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport will be designed in line with the Hilton Garden Inn Latin America prototype, featuring the brand's quality standards while incorporating local elements to give the hotel an authentic style. The hotel will feature 152 guest rooms including eight suites, all outfitted with comfortable bedding, LCD high-definition flat-screen television, easy-to-set alarm clock with MP3 connectivity, a spacious work desk, and a "hospitality center" that features a mini refrigerator and coffee maker.

Dining options will include a full service restaurant and lobby lounge offering freshly prepared full, cooked-to-order breakfast, lunch and dinner. The hotel will also feature the 24-hour Pavilion Pantry® shop with a selection of delicious readymade meals, beverages and snacks. Recreational facilities will boast an outdoor swimming pool, and a complimentary fitness center featuring cardio and strength training equipment by Precor.

Travelers to Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport will also have access to comfortable and efficient meeting space with a pre-function area, three flexible meeting rooms and one boardroom. Signature Hilton Garden Inn brand attributes such as complimentary Wi-Fi and a 24-hour business center complete the facilities.

Dominique Carvonis, President of CAB, S.A. said, "Our joint efforts with Hilton Worldwide will help boost the environment of this industrial zone, creating nearly 100 direct jobs and 300 indirect employment roles. With Hilton Worldwide's comprehensive hotel training programs, we will develop skilled human resources thus contributing to increase the standards and quality of service to our guests, and ultimately enhance the prestige of our beloved Haiti."

The hotel will participate in Hilton HHonors®, the only guest rewards program that allows members to earn Points & Miles® for the same stay and redeem points for free nights with No Blackout Dates at more than 4,000 hotels worldwide.

Hilton Worldwide currently has a portfolio of 15 hotels and resorts open and welcoming travelers in the Caribbean.

Made in Haiti!

Discussion Question:
What's the best way for Haitians to have tablets:  manufacture their own or receive donated tablets from other countries?

Have an opinion?   Share your thoughts in a comment (all comments are moderated) at the end of this article. Have a voice!
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Impoverished Haiti manufacturing its own Android tablet

By Amelie Baron

PORT-AU-PRINCE Sun Mar 16, 2014

(Reuters) - Better known for producing third-world poverty and political mayhem - as well as a world-class rum - the Western Hemisphere's least developed country has made a surprising entry into the high-tech world with its own Android tablet.

Sandwiched between textile factories in a Port-au-Prince industrial park next to a slum, a Haitian-founded company has begun manufacturing the low-cost tablet called Sûrtab, a made-up name using the French adjective "sûr," meaning "sure," to suggest reliability.

Unlike the factories next door where low-paid textile workers churn out cheap undergarments for the U.S. market, Sûrtab workers are equipped with soldering irons, not sewing machines.

Dressed in sterile white work clothes, and a hair net, Sergine Brice is proud of her job. "I never imagined I could, one day, make a tablet by myself," she said.

Unemployed for a year after losing her position in a phone company, Brice, 22, was not sure she had the skills when she took the job after Sûrtab opened last year.

"When I arrived and realized the job deals with electronic components, I was wondering if I would be able to do it. But when I finished my first tablet ... I felt an immense pleasure," she said.

Her family and friends were skeptical. "None of them believed me," she said. "Tablets made in Haiti? What are you talking about?" they told her.

"Haitians have in our minds the idea that nothing can be done in this country. I proved that yes, we Haitians have the capacity to do many things," she said. "It's not just Americans or Chinese. We've got what they've got, so we can do it too."

With $200,000 in start-up funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and using imported Asian components, the factory produces three models all with 7-inch (18-cm) screens that run on Google Inc's Android operation system. They range from a simple wifi tablet with 512 megabytes of RAM for about $100, to a 3G model with 2-gigabytes of memory for $285.

The small factory with 40 employees is a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s when Haiti had a thriving assembly industry, including computer boards, as well as baseballs for U.S. professional teams.

Political turmoil, and a U.S. economic embargo in the 1990s following a military coup, put them out of business.

"A product such as Sûrtab shows that Haitians are not just destined for low-wage, low-skilled jobs," said John Groarke, country director for USAID. "It's the sort of high-skilled job that the country needs to work its way out of poverty."

Brice, who works an eight-hour shift, would not disclose her salary. Sûrtab employees receive a bonus for each tablet that successfully passes the quality control and the company says it pays two to three times the Haitian minimum wage of $5 a day.

INDIVIDUALLY ASSEMBLED

With only a limited selection of expensive imported tablets available in Haiti, Sûrtab is the cheapest device on the market.

"It's easy to use and it takes really good quality photos, like any other tablet," said one happy customer, Lisbeth Plantin. "And it's great to see 'Made in Haiti' on the back," she added.

At the factory there is no production line, instead workers assemble each device from start to finish.

"We could have done like in Asia, one task per employee, which is faster, but we wanted to have a better quality product," said Diderot Musset, Sûrtab's production manager.

Depending on the model, it takes an employee between 35 minutes and an hour to make a tablet. The company produces between 4,000 to 5,000 tablets a month, but plans to double that in April.

"We want the parts of the market which are not taken by the big players, especially in developing countries. These people would like to have a tablet but cannot afford an iPad," he said, referring to the Apple Inc device that costs at least $300 in U.S. stores and is barely available in Haiti.

All the factory floor employees are women.

"It was not a choice we made but it happens that women have better results. I think women may be more open to learn something completely different from what they were doing before," Musset said with a smile.

The company is running into inevitable skepticism about the quality of a Haitian-made tablet. "Some people only believe in it when they come here and see the girls working," he said.

The company has a retail distribution deal in Haiti with Digicel, a global telecom company that dominates the local cellphone market, as well as sales to Haitian government ministries and local non-governmental organizations.

A university in Kenya also ordered 650 Sûrtab devices.

Sûrtab is hoping to diversify its product line beyond tablets, said Patrick Sagna, director of business development.

"We want to establish a presence in the software sector. We are in contact with people from San Francisco who are ready to work with Haitian developers," he said.

Sûrtab's investors are looking to build an applied science graduate school, as well as looping in Haiti's skilled arts and crafts industry to help with design.

"Rather than importing covers for our tablets, we will produce them locally," said Sagna. "We want our packaging, made with recycled and recyclable materials, to become a traveling cultural exhibition to highlight Haitian culture around the world," he added.

Save the Date!

Heineken: $100Mm investment in Haiti brewery

By TRENTON DANIEL

Associated Press, April 4, 2014 

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2014/04/04/5471985/heineken-100mm-investment-in-haiti.html#storylink=cpy

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The Dutch brewer Heineken announced Friday that it is investing $100 million in its Haiti production plant that makes the popular lager Prestige.

The relatively large investment is significant because many international companies have been reluctant to spend money in Haiti because of a business climate hampered by red tape, allegations of corruption and a flimsy infrastructure.

But Jose Matthijsse, general director of the National Brewery of Haiti that Heineken owns, said the Dutch company is eager to invest more in the Caribbean country because political stability and cooperation have improved under the current government.

Heineken purchased the Haitian brewery in 2011, and owns 95 percent of the company that produces Prestige. The remaining 5 percent is held by Diageo Ireland, the company that makes Guinness stout.

About one-fifth of the new investment has already gone toward construction of a second 24,300-square-foot (2,260) production line that opened December in the same facility in Port-au-Prince. The addition will allow the brewery to double output, for 40,000 more cases of Prestige and other beverages produced every day.

The new production line has also enabled the brewery to introduce a 16-ounce bottle of Prestige.

The rest of the investment will be used to further increase lager production, manufacture more bottles and to purchase items such as trucks and generators.

The brewery has long been limited in how much lager it produces by the number of the signature amber-hued bottles available at any one time. People tend to buy the lager in bulk because it's cheaper that way, which can delay the return of bottles for deposit.

Because the bottles can be returned, the brewery has often limited its past production based on how many containers are available. Past manufacturing of new bottles has never been enough to make up for the losses.

"All Haitians know that at times their favorite beer, Prestige, is not available for consumption," Matthijsse said. "And that has been a frustration over the past years ... So it was about time that the capacity be increased."

Meet Ancito Etienne!

Inspiration from Haiti

Lynchburg College.
The 512 first-year students in the Class of 2017 represent the most diverse class ever to enter Lynchburg College — at 28 percent.

First-year Ancito Etienne is one of the standouts in the class. A member of the Westover Honors Program, Ancito comes to LC from his native Haiti, where at age 15, he helped rescue 15 people from the rubble after the 2010 earthquake and served as a translator for American doctors. Later he collected books and started summer school programs for his fellow students.

But that’s getting ahead of the story.

At age 12, Ancito felt large lumps in his neck, but had no idea what they were. “We had never experienced cancer in my family before,” he said. Finally, he traveled four hours north of his hometown to a hospital his parents could afford, and discovered that he had lymphoma.

In 2008, thanks to Partners in Health (PIH), Ancito and his father were able to come to Boston, where Ancito received chemotherapy and radiation for eight months. “I was fascinated by the way the doctors were speaking,” he said. “I had never heard English before.” So during his stay, he learned to speak English, adding to his native Haitian Creole and French, and he beat the cancer.

On Jan.12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 100,000 people and doing massive damage. Ancito happened to be at the Partners in Health office, where he had been volunteering as a way to repay all the organization had done for him. This is how Ancito described, in an essay, what he saw as he ran outside and the dust cleared.

“The big old building across the street collapsed, and about 50 people died inside of it,” he said. “All we heard was people screaming and crying, and cars honking. I stood there for about 15 minutes until I could see. When I was finally able to see, I wished I was blind.”

Ancito ran home, and his family’s rental house was cracked, but standing and he found his parents and four siblings in a nearby field unharmed. So he began going from house to house and finding people to help him pull others from the rubble.

He soon received another call to help. PIH said the American doctors needed translators in the ER, the ICU, and even in the operating room. “I saw a lot,” Ancito said. “That’s why I don’t really like medicine.”

Cate Oswald, the woman Ancito worked with at PIH, was so impressed with him she helped him secure a scholarship to attend a two-week summer program at Brown University on leadership and global health. At the end of the class, each participant was to submit an action plan. Ancito’s plan was to build a library at his school. There is only one library in Port-au-Prince, the national library, and students rarely have a chance to go there during hours of operation, he said.

Ancito managed to round up about 300 books in French and another 400 in English, though very few Haitians can speak English, he said. Those books are still in use at his former high school.

In 2011, Ancito once again earned a scholarship to Brown for a summer program on organizing and mobilizing leadership for social change. Again, Ancito created a plan to create a summer class in Haiti on the same topics he studied: education, housing, food security, birth control, and climate change.

With the help of a former social studies teacher, his program got stared in summer 2012 with 15 students and continued in 2013 with 25. He hopes to be able to go back again next summer to keep the project going.

In the interim, a woman at Brown was so impressed with Ancito that she asked her parents to take him in and found a high school for him to attend in Rhode Island for his senior year.

Ancito found Lynchburg College through Colleges That Change Lives, and LC was able to provide scholarships to pay half his costs for a year. His Rhode Island family fundraised for the other half. Unfortunately, he said, his parents cannot afford to help him (they have no electricity and only recently moved out of their cracked house) so he is unsure whether he will be able to continue college next year. But he remains hopeful.

“My parents have taught me that education is the most powerful weapon which I can use to change the world and that nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal,” he said.

Read another article about Ancito.