Above: the under-construction El Rancho hotel

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The renovated NH El Rancho hotel in Haiti’s Petion-Ville is scheduled to open in February 2013.

The project is the third major hotel coming to Haiti in the next four months, along with the Royal Oasis, which has set a December opening, and the Best Western, which is planning to open in January.

By the summer of 2013, Metropolitan Port-au-Prince is slated to have 3,495 hotel rooms. That number represents a 40 percent in growth in the city’s current hotel stock of 2,495.

According to Haiti’s Ministry of Tourism, the new projects will create over 6,000 jobs in the area.

El Rancho, which was, in its former incarnation, once of Haiti’s landmark hotels, will have 72 rooms, seven conference rooms, a modern gym, a lobby bar and WI-FI internet, among other features.

The hotel will be managed by Spain-based NH Hotels Group, which manages more than 400 hotel properties around the world.