Despite Haiti’s lack of infrastructure, at least a million homeless and a chaotic economy, Dominique Carvonis is taking steps to develop a seven- to eight-story hotel of at least 100 rooms near Toussaint Louverture Airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince.

Carvonis, who has homes in both Miami and Port-au-Prince, says the facility would augment nearby Visa Lodge, the 40-room hotel she and her partners developed 10 years ago. Her second business hotel would include units and suites and cater to humanitarian organizations and nongovernmental agencies, or NGOs. Such workers are trying to help the chronically troubled island rebuild after an earthquake struck Jan. 12, 2010, “disappearing” some 300,000 and rendering 1 million to 1.5 million homeless.

Haiti lost about 500 guestrooms in the 7.0 earthquake, its epicenter some 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Carvonis said in an interview July 22 during the 15th annual National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators & Developers conference in suburban Miami. While she says no investment bank exists in Haiti to aid in such development, “it is possible to get incentives from the government,” under new President Michel Martelly.

Armed with a feasibility study prepared by Edward L. Xanders of Tallahassee-based Interim Hospitality Consultants, “we’re looking at the best brands, the best box,” Carvonis said. She, her four children and other partners are involved in the project.

This landmark at Moulin sur Mer houses a museum dedicated to the history of Haiti and a chapel ideal for weddings.

Carvonis also owns Moulin sur Mer, a conversion of an old sugar plantation with a water mill on 32 acres about an hour northwest of Port au Prince in the region of Cote des Arcadins. Business is booming at that 70-room resort thanks to “people who want to escape from the city,” she says. “It’s a very peaceful environment that is proper not only to relaxation but also to work.” Moulin sur Mer is marketed to international organizations and NGOs as a training and meeting site.

“This is a business hotel,” she said of her proposed project, “so we’re answering to a need for lodging right now. There are other areas of Haiti—Port-au-Prince is not Haiti—outside of Port-au-Prince, a world to discover with a lot of natural resources and a lot of potential for tourism. The typical American will not go to Haiti but the sophisticated traveler will want to come to Haiti to explore.”

This shows the cabins typical of Carvonis’ Visa Lodge near the Port-au-Prince airport.

Xanders and Carvonis met with representatives of Hilton Worldwide, Carlson Worldwide, Choice Hotels International and Wyndham Hotel Group at NABHOOD. All those brands have arranged a Haiti visit for this month. Interim Hospitality Consultants favors a Hilton Garden Inn similar to one Bill Fortier, Hilton’s senior vice president of development for the Americas, showed Xanders and Carvonis in Miami. Carvonis, meanwhile, cautions that she’s still in “research mode.”

Are there infrastructure and security/workforce issues? Her Visa Lodge and proposed site are in an industrial park with water and sewer, “but we have to provide our own generators,” she says. As for security, “I don’t feel unsafe,” Carvonis says. “But you just have to make sure that you do not go to areas that are known as unsafe areas. It is true that people have security gates and armed guards in all the hotels, but it is becoming like a normal situation. It’s only Port-au-Prince that you feel that, not in the outskirts.”

Despite such issues, she’s determined. “If we don’t do it, somebody else will think of it. Since we’re already there and we are the only hotel in that area, we should take advantage of it right now.”