Royal Caribbean continues to cancel stops to its private Haiti destination

Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald on Jan 14, 2026

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At a moment when Haiti’s tourism continues to grind to a halt, the country is facing another setback.

Royal Caribbean, which had suspended visits to its private destination of Labadee in northern Haiti until May of this year, says the service will now remain suspended through December 2026.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have extended our pause to Labadee,” a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean Group said, declining to elaborate on the concerns behind the decision. The Miami-based cruise line said it has already communicated the extension directly to affected guests.

Last April, after canceling scheduled visits in 2024, the cruise line informed travel agents that their ships would not make any visits to Labadee until at least May 2026.

The prospect of at least eight more months without cruise passengers visiting the northern coast of Haiti, which is hours away from the capital, comes as the country’s second-largest city, nearby Cap-Haïtien, grows increasingly strained by an influx of people fleeing gang violence in Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns, as well as returnees from the United States and neighboring countries, including the Dominican Republic.

It also adds to the financial woes of the country, which remains under a State Department Level 4 “Do not travel” warning and, after years of welcoming several hundred thousand of visitors, only saw 175,000 foreign visitors last year, according to its tourism ministry.

For 14 months the main international airport, Toussaint Louverture in Port-au-Prince, has remained off-limits to U.S. commercial flights, with American Airlines laying off its remaining workers. That has left only the smaller airports in Cap-Haïtien and Les Cayes available for international travel.

The Les Cayes facility, Antoine Simon International Airport, was finally authorized last month by the Transportation Security Administration as a “Last Point of Departure,” meaning Florida-bound passengers no longer have to travel through Cap-Haïtien for secondary inspection before arriving in the U.S.

While Royal Caribbean is re-routing its cruise passengers to other destinations like Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands and Nassau, Bahamas, hundreds of families in northern Haiti will continue to see their incomes dwindle as a result of the stoppage at what the cruise lines has long considered one of its exclusive port destinations. Hundreds of families depended on the stop to eke out a living through the sale of arts and crafts and guided excursions.

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