Royal Caribbean's Decision to Continue stops in Haiti

Kudos to Royal Caribbean for being proactive in trying to assist with the recovery in Haiti. RCCL's CEO has come under fire during the last week for his decision to allow the fleet to continue calling on the port of Labadee, Haiti which is the company's private island. His reasoning is because the ships will assist with economic recovery and relief efforts by bringing much needed supplies to the island. While I applaud the companies efforts to aid Haiti, I'm just not sure how my clients or I would feel about the port call.

The CEO says the company is offering the ability to combine a vacation with relief efforts in the plagued nation. However, I didn't see them adjusting the shore trips to reflect any type of volunteerism or relief work in the area. The countries of Haiti and Dominican Republic are great vacation destinations, as is a Royal Caribbean cruise, and ones that I recommend on a daily basis. I would just be a bit reserved to actually send a vacationing client to a country that is struggling with this enormous natural disaster. Its definitely a hard line to walk to balance the need for aid with the idea that bringing wealthy vacationers to the island in hopes of boosting the economy... Would that be a kick in the face of the Haitian people?

Why not instead, offer the ships for use in the recovery efforts? Every client I know would gladly postpone their vacation knowing that RCCL was donating their ships to get supplies, volunteers and aid workers to Haiti. From a PR standpoint, I can't think of a better way to promote such a immense cultural volunteerism program for the company without any negative criticism that the company still wants its private destination to make money.