Above: the Royal Oasis

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti’s new Royal Oasis hotel will open its doors in Petion-Ville Dec. 12, according to Haiti Tourism Minister Stephanie Villedrouin.

The announcement followed a meeting between Villedrouin and Spanish hotel company Occidental Hotels & Resorts, which is managing the project.

Occidental manages a group of hotels in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the majority in Mexico.

The hotel is located at 115 Rue Panamericaine in Petion-Ville.

Some of the hotel’s staff will be graduates of the L’Ecole Hoteliere Haitienne (the Haitian Hotel School), which was revived thanks to a grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund to the Oasis Foundation at the end of 2011.

Last year, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund made a $2 million equity investment in the Oasis, a business hotel whose construction was halted after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Jerry Tardieu, the hotel’s chief executive officer, was named the president of the Council of Economic and Social Development, a “strategic” body organized by Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe in June.

For more on Haiti’s drive to remake its tourism image, see Caribbean Journal’s feature interview with Villedrouin from earlier this summer.