Teri West
Royal Caribbean Group's portfolio of private destinations officially grew to three last month, with the opening of Royal Beach Club Paradise Island in Nassau.
But one of those three destinations will not welcome any cruise guests this year at all. Calls at Labadee, Haiti, are canceled for the full year, the company confirmed this month.
Royal Caribbean ships haven't visited Labadee at all since last April, but when the company put visits on pause at the time, it described the move as temporary. Four months later, it extended the pause by three more months. But before those three months were even up, it then extended the break.
Meanwhile, the company is rapidly expanding its portfolio of private destinations elsewhere. Destinations in Mexico, Greece and Vanuatu all in the pipeline.
Patrick Scholes, the managing director of lodging and leisure equity research at Truist Securities, told me he considers the pause on calls at Labadee pretty insignificant financially for a company of Royal Caribbean's scale. The primary implication on his mind was cancellations by guests for whom the destination would make or break their plans. But even that, Scholes said, would likely not be financially significant.
Although Labadee was open this time last year, it had been through a rocky period: It was closed in 2024 from March to October.
Gang activity in Haiti was surging in 2024 during the first pause on cruise calls. Last July, senior U.N. officials estimated that criminal groups controlled 90% of Port-au-Prince and that violence was expanding into the Southern part of the country, according to the Associated Press. There has been continued violence this winter and reports of a worsening hunger crisis.
Labadee is in northern Haiti on a peninsula about 130 miles from Port-au-Prince.
Cruise companies with private destinations simply can't control political or economic circumstances in the country where the properties are, Scholes said.
That means that while cruise ships are mobile enough to avoid the paths of hurricanes and can redeploy vessels from areas of strife, cruise companies face the same challenges as any land-based travel operator when they invest in private destinations.