(CNN) -- When Catherine Jones recently booked a Royal Caribbean cruise that included a stop in Haiti, she never expected that her vacation would lead to deep soul searching and an emergency family meeting.

Jones, who lives in Hickory, North Carolina, is scheduled to start the trip at the beginning of next month -- a five-day getaway with her sister, who is in the Army and will go to Afghanistan in March, and their 87-year-old mother.

"We kind of discussed it: How can you sit there and say, 'Waiter, bring me a drink' while I'm on a private beach ... knowing that 100 miles away, people are dying," Jones said.

It's a debate that's been raging ever since Royal Caribbean resumed bringing vacationers to Haiti after last week's earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince.

Royal Caribbean deposits the tourists on the picturesque peninsula of Labadee, which was unaffected by the disaster and where the company has spent millions of dollars on what it calls its own "private paradise."

The area is heavily guarded, and visitors don't spend the night. But they enjoy Labadee's "pristine beaches, breathtaking scenery and spectacular water activities," according to Royal Caribbean's Web site.

Blogs and message boards have been full of outrage and disgust at the idea of tourists frolicking in the sun while bodies pile up in Port-au-Prince and quake survivors struggle to stay alive.

"Royal Caribbean is performing a sickening act to me by taking tourists to Haiti," wrote one poster on CNN's Connect the World blog.

"Having a beach party while people are dead, dying and suffering minutes away hardly makes me want to cruise that particular line," wrote another.

What's the right thing to do?

Experts in ethics and sustainable tourism said that kind of reaction is natural and understandable, but they urged people to look deeper at the issue and consider the benefits of tourism for Haiti now and beyond.

"Monies that are coming in as part of tourism are going to trickle down throughout the local economy at a time when the local people need it the most," said Brian Mullis, president of Sustainable Travel International, a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible travel.

Because visitors can have a positive effect during their stay, tourism should still be taking place in Haiti, even at this terrible time, Mullis said.

In a statement issued after the earthquake, the United Nations World Tourism Organization also weighed in, saying that "tourism can become a useful instrument for the necessary reconstruction process in Haiti."

History shows other examples of the importance of tourism to devastated areas: New York inviting visitors after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and New Orleans, Louisiana, appealing for tourist dollars after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

More at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/01/21/haiti.tourism.ethics/index.html?hpt=C1