Expedia Blacklists Haiti, Says it No Longer Exists

by Gary Leff

There aren’t many big online travel booking websites anymore. For instance Priceline owns Booking.com and Kayal. Expedia owns Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotwire, and CheapTickets.

So it’s concerning when one of the online travel giants decides to blacklist a destination but that’s just what’s happened to Haiti.

Haiti’s tourism sector is up in arms over recent travel warnings from the U.S., Canada and France that have led to at least one booking company — Expedia — blacklisting the country’s two international airports and hotels as illegal.

People seeking to book flights and hotel rooms … are being blocked from doing so following violent protests that erupted on Feb. 7. Though Haitians were shuttered in for more than a week, with schools and businesses closed, international carriers like American, Spirit and JetBlue kept flying.

…“This airport is not a legal airport to book,” read the Expedia.com flight booking page for Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Cap-Haïtien airports through the holiday weekend. On Tuesday the site switched the language to “We could not find any airports that match your search.”


Expedia Dancers Aren’t Currently Allowed to Perform in Haiti. Flickr: Juggernautco

No doubt Expedia is afraid they’ll have some liability if they sell someone travel to or in Haiti and something bad happens, but when even the lawyers for US airlines are fine with actually flying there — passengers and crew alike — something seems amiss. Moreover Expedia might just as easily offer a disclaimer that customers would have to acknowledge. Indeed, Expedia already disclaims liability,

BY OFFERING TRAVEL PRODUCTS IN PARTICULAR INTERNATIONAL DESTINATIONS, EXPEDIA DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT TRAVEL TO SUCH AREAS IS ADVISABLE OR WITHOUT RISK.

While the US raised the travel warning for Haiti those warnings are frequently amiss, politically driven, and tend not to be removed until long after the facts on the ground have shifted. (By the way it isn’t just U.S. travel warnings where that is true, China warns its citizens about visiting the U.S. because of extreme risk.)

To the extent that the facts on the ground in Haiti are exacerbated by poverty, what does blocking inbound travel do exactly?

(HT: Marginal Revolution)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Absolutely ridiculous … I need to get to Haiti. My husband is Haitian . He’s there caring for the orphans we rescue . How do they justify telling me where I can go ?????

  2. Thanks Gary for raising awareness of this. I go back and forth to Haiti a lot working on various humanitarian projects. Haiti already suffers in so many other ways that they don’t need Expedia doing this also. As you pointed out the major carriers continued to fly in and out over the last week. I had a number of colleagues who had no issues locally. Don’t forget as a traveler anywhere in the world one should also be careful of where you go and with whom.

  3. As El Presidente said 2 years ago, Haiti is a sh…….
    Went with a large crew after the 2010 earthquake to deliver cranes and other heavy equipment for rebuilding efforts, it would have been better to send crayons and coloring books as the iq levels were bordering on complete idiot, rampant crime, even the cruise crowds think its a dump. But the bleeding heart liberals continue with their stupidity and playing the blame game.

  4. It’s funny. If I search for a flight to PAP, it says “nope”, but if I search for a flight to PTP (Guadeloupe), it’ll gladly sell me a flight on AF MIA-PAP-PTP.

    So, if it’s not safe to fly into PAP, why not block bookings including it as well as those terminating or originating there?

  8. Apparently one can not also book/search any flights to Iraq as well now on Expedia. Was able to search until late last year so that is another country they have blocked it seems. And since Chase uses Expedia back-end so cant use UR points to book ticket to there now on chase travel portal unless transfer them to partners and go that route.

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