Officials in Haiti celebrate completion of Marriott hotel

By Michelle Nurse Last updated Feb 25, 2015

People eat near the pool at the new Marriott hotel after the hotel's opening ceremony in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015. Haiti's second international-branded hotel opened Tuesday in what backers of the project and officials hope will be a spur to further economic development in the impoverished country. (Photo via AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery) — People eat near the pool at the new Marriott hotel after the hotel’s opening ceremony in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015. Haiti’s second international-branded hotel opened Tuesday in what backers of the project and officials hope will be a spur to further economic development. (**Photo via AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery**)

A second international-branded hotel opened Tuesday in the Haitian capital in what backers of the project and officials hope will be a spur to further economic development.

The 175-room Marriott Port-au-Prince is a four-star hotel geared primarily toward travelers looking to do business in Haiti, said Denis O’Brien, chairman of Digicel, the telecommunications company that developed the project adjacent to its Haiti headquarters in the Turgeau neighborhood of the capital.

“If a foreign direct investor is going to Haiti, they have to have a good first impression,” O’Brien, whose company is the largest private employer in Haiti, said in an interview before the event. “Normally, American foreign direct investors like to stay in an American-branded hotel.”