Haiti, land of contradictions they say, where the past is not just remembered but lived. The soil still carries the footprints of revolution, the air thick with the echoes of history. And yet, the world sees it in fragments—a place of struggle, a place of need. But Guerline Emmanuel sees something totally different.
Guerline and her husband, Hogarth, stand at the helm of Belle Vue Tours, not as mere entrepreneurs but as witnesses to possibility, believers in what Haiti is, not just what it has survived. Her journey in particular is not about reinventing the wheel but about honoring what is already there.
Three lessons emerge from her story here, each a call to those who would see Haiti as a whole, as three-dimensional:
Partnership is Power. The old ways of competition and undercutting have no place in true transformation. Guerline speaks of collaboration, of lifting together, of recognizing that the very soul of Haiti’s tourism lies in its people on the ground—the artisans, the fishermen, the innkeepers who have always held this nation upright. Belle Vue Tours is not a lone endeavor but an extension of many hands, many powerful dreams.
The Land Remembers. Before she set her course, Guerline and her husband studied the land—not just the terrain but the pulse of the Haitian people, the rhythm of its needs. Haiti’s tourism is not a blank slate but a layered text, one that must be read with care. To build something real, something lasting, she knew she had to listen first.
Skin in the Game The diaspora has long been asked to give—to send, to donate, to patch wounds that never seem to heal. But Guerline asked for something different. She speaks of investment, of shifting from charity to stakeholding, from temporary relief to enduring presence. Lawd help you if you use the dreaded word “resilient” in the same sentence with Haiti. Haiti, she said, does not need another gift; it needs its sons and daughters to plant roots, to claim what is theirs, to believe not just in homecomings but in homebuilding.
This is not just a business story. It is a meditation on legacy, on a nation’s past and the urgency of its future. The question is not whether Haiti can rise—it always has. The question is whether we will see it, whether we will stand beside it, whether we will learn to build with Haiti rather than for it.