PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Glim­mers of hope are com­ing to this dev­as­tat­ed cap­i­tal and its sur­round­ing cities, as the con­crete Roy­al Oa­sis ho­tel ris­es over a met­ro­pol­i­tan area still filled with dis­placed-per­sons camps hous­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands. Signs of Haiti's come­back can al­so be seen in the 105-room Best West­ern ho­tel be­ing built with­in blocks of shan­ty-cov­ered hill­sides.

At least sev­en ho­tels are un­der con­struc­tion or are in the plan­ning stage in Port-au-Prince and its sur­round­ing ar­eas, rais­ing hopes that thou­sands of in­vestors will soon fill their air-con­di­tioned rooms look­ing to build fac­to­ries and tourist in­fra­struc­ture that will help Haiti bounce back from a 2010 earth­quake that of­fi­cials say claimed 300,000 lives. Some dam­aged ho­tels are un­der­go­ing ren­o­va­tions.

To­geth­er, the projects add up to well over $100 mil­lion in new in­vest­ment and will gen­er­ate sev­er­al thou­sand jobs in a na­tion still strug­gling to emerge from years of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil. In fact, the new ho­tels are the first sig­nif­i­cant pri­vate-sec­tor con­struc­tion in Port-au-Prince in the two years since the quake.

"Cau­tious op­ti­mism and deep skep­ti­cism" is how econ­o­mist Claude Beauboeuf de­scribes Haiti's ho­tel boom. For peo­ple to fill the ho­tels, he said, it's im­por­tant that Pres­i­dent Michel Martel­ly ad­dress the prob­lems fac­ing his gov­ern­ment, which in­clude an il­le­gal force of armed men open­ly roam­ing the coun­try, a string of mys­te­ri­ous po­lice killings and strife with the op­po­si­tion-con­trolled Par­lia­ment. He al­so needs a prime min­is­ter to re­place the out­go­ing one who re­signed af­ter clash­ing with the pres­i­dent over pri­or­i­ties.

"If he doesn't ad­dress these things, in­vestors will with­draw," Beauboeuf said, cit­ing Club Med and the Hol­i­day Inn as ear­li­er ex­am­ples of fran­chis­es that left Haiti be­cause of po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty. The planned ho­tels in the cap­i­tal are not aimed at tourists, who avoid grit­ty Port-au-Prince.

In­stead, de­vel­op­ers are tar­get­ing the con­trac­tors, for­eign aid work­ers and diplo­mats for whom find­ing a room can be a chal­lenge. The Clin­ton Bush Haiti Fund, led by the pre­vi­ous two US.pres­i­dents, iden­ti­fied new busi­ness-class ho­tels as key to at­tract­ing for­eign in­vestors look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties in Haiti. Sim­i­lar­ly, Pres­i­dent Martel­ly has said he wants to make Haiti less de­pen­dent on for­eign aid and friend­lier to out­side in­vest­ments.

One of the biggest for­eign in­vest­ments in Haiti is an in­dus­tri­al park un­der con­struc­tion in the north that's sched­uled to be­gin gar­ment pro­duc­tion in Sep­tem­ber. The gi­ant US$300 mil­lion Cara­col in­dus­tri­al park will be run by South Ko­re­an man­u­fac­tur­er Sae-A Trad­ing Co Ltd and is ex­pect­ed to bring an ini­tial 20,000 jobs to the re­mote area. And there are small­er ef­forts to help Haiti im­prove pro­duc­tion so farm­ers can bet­ter ex­port man­goes, ca­cao and cof­fee.

The Hait­ian cap­i­tal, which in­cludes sev­er­al over­lap­ping cities such as Petionville, lost near­ly 850 ho­tel rooms in the quake, ac­cord­ing to Tourism Min­is­ter Stephanie B. Ville­drouin. For more than a year af­ter the dis­as­ter, it was of­ten im­pos­si­ble to find a room with­out months of ad­vance no­tice.

Ville­drouin said all of those ho­tel rooms will have been re­placed by the end of the year. Sev­er­al ho­tel projects are al­so un­der way out­side the cap­i­tal, in­clud­ing in the sleepy, pic­turesque fish­ing vil­lage of Jacmel on the south­ern coast, and are aimed at what Ville­drouin and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials hope will be­come a grow­ing mar­ket for tourists will­ing to over­look the cap­i­tal and its trou­bles.

"Haiti is not Port-au-Prince," the tourism min­is­ter said. "Haiti is not the earth­quake." Even be­fore the cat­a­stro­phe, on­ly a hand­ful of ho­tels met in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards of com­fort, in­clud­ing the Ho­tel Mon­tana, the Ho­tel Vil­la Cre­ole and the new­er Karibe Ho­tel. These would of­ten fill with jour­nal­ists, in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers and oth­ers dur­ing elec­tions or times of cri­sis, be­com­ing hubs of ac­tiv­i­ty in a city with lit­tle in the way of en­ter­tain­ment and where few for­eign­ers ven­ture out at night.

The quake large­ly de­stroyed the Mon­tana, though part of it has since re-opened, and ex­ten­sive­ly dam­aged the Vil­la Cre­ole, which re­mained open af­ter the dis­as­ter and is now be­ing ren­o­vat­ed. The Karibe was large­ly un­scathed. Ville­drouin said Port-au-Prince of­fi­cial­ly has a 60 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rate but many of the ho­tels are too rus­tic for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el­ers.