This post was mentioned on Twitter by Travel_Tweet: Haiti: All hands on deck, not business as usual: Editor’s note: We have had plenty of comments about Royal Caribbe… http://bit.ly/8Xfv6u...

CRS is currently running several large relief programs in Haiti. We are delivering about 62 metric tons of food a day, we helped restore the St. Francis de Sales hospital to working condition, and our medical teams are treating an estimated 300 patients a day.

People, and groups, are entitled to their opinions about the correctness of RCCL returning to Haiti, but CREST, quoting the NYT, is vastly overstating the security problems of Haiti at this moment, and oversimplifying with the type of ‘help’ they suggest RCCL might give to that country in lieu of continuing their operations there.

While there is tension wrought by the extreme need of the people, our staff in Port au Prince have found on balance that the Haitian people are patient, resilient, and grateful for assistance. A colleague remarked that the sporatic acts of desperation-fueled violence he had witnessed or heard about in Haiti did not seem to outnumber the melees reported during the American Black Friday sales. Please remember, the Haitians are not fighting over flatscreen TVs – they are starving, hurt and homeless, and they need our help.

It would be unrealisitc to expect RCCL, without any prior experience in humanitarian disasters, to be able to render any but the most simple of acts of assistance. To suggest that this firm is somehow damaging the country by continuing to provide some revenues to a very needy nation, and the promise of normalcy in a world starved of the mundane at this moment,is the height of irresponsiblity on their part.

Several of their suggestions smack of inexperience instantly – cruise ships and their ports are not configured properly to carry and deliver relief supplies, workers need faster transportation to the area than a cruise ship, the idea of housing displaced Haitians at the port in realitiy only means transplating the refugee crisis, not helping it – for Haitians with no prior ties to Labadee, its not feasible to move them temporarily a hundred miles to the coast for relief activities. Housing relief wrokers on ships is likewise impractical – it removes them from quick access to the areas they need to work.

CREST should stick to offering suggestions on how to limit one’s carbon admissions. And I gotta wonder, how much assistance have they offered to Haiti? What? They say they’re not in the relief business? Well, neither is RCCL…

CREST is a 501c3 charity and they claim to be “an instrument for biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.” However, not one of their “projects” has ever had anything to do with Haiti.

This is a tax exempt liberal operation that is do what I say and not what I do. In 2008 they took in $929,000 and spent $703,000 which included $236,000 for salaries and benefits. It is an exercise for the reader of their Federal tax return to determine if their good works are nothing more than free paid travel “to assess”, “to encourage”, and “market.”

I suggest CREST have their supporters donate their personal automobiles for transportation in Haiti and bring Haitian refugees to stay with them in their private residences.

YEs, CCL offered up a ship–one that was scheduled to go into drydock for a retrofit.

But RCCL is a business and with their new ship, they need to remain profitable so they can continue to call on Labadee. If they did as CREST suggests, they would risk serious financial consequences.

RCCL is a socially conscious business and they are doing a lot more for Haiti than other cruise lines. What have the airlines that fly into there done?

The response from CREST is absurd!

As for the precedent of cruise ships housing Katrina refugees – the U.S. government contracted with Carnival for those cabins but there weren’t acutally refugees aboard.

As for CREST’s denigrating the economic impact of the daytrippers on cruise ships – CREST needs a reality check. Haiti doesn’t have a tourism industry. Instead of throwing stones at RCCL for doing what they are doing (which by any estimation is significant), why don’t they look beyond the surface and find out why Haiti doesn’t have substantial tourist facilities? Maybe they’d like to ask Four Seasons (or some other) why they don’t build a resort there. The Haitian guards were at Labadee long before the earthquake, by the way. It is also my understanding that RCCL is assisting in finding/helping their Haitian workers who were in country at the time of the earthquake.

Out of personal curiosity, I would like to know how many CREST members have ever set foot in Haiti for tourism purposes.