15th May 2023

Announcements made during and in the margins of Cuba’s recently ended annual tourism fair FITCuba 2023 suggest that international hotel groups invested in Cuba have confidence that visitor numbers will fully return to 2019 pre-pandemic levels.

Speaking at the fair, Gabriel Escarrer, the Vice Chairman and CEO of Meliá Hotels, said: “We have no doubt that Cuba will recover to pre-crisis levels and will be in a better state than ever before. For this reason, it is essential for us to continue improving our portfolio of hotels on the island; promoting new quality experiences in line with an increasingly demanding demand.”

Escarrer went on to announce four new hotels in Meliá’s Cuban portfolio: the INNSiDE Habana Cathedral, a new 50-room hotel marketed under its INNSiDE lifestyle brand which is intended for “adventurous travellers at an affordable price”; the 188-room Hotel Plaza in Havana, first opened in 1909, as a part of its luxury Meliá Collection portfolio; the historic 178 room Hotel Sevilla, close to Paseo del Prado in Havana; and the 531 room Sol Turquesa Beach in Holguín, which Meliá will manage. 

He also confirmed that the group’s Meliá Trinidad Peninsula, a 400-room five-star hotel in the colonial city of Trinidad will open in the autumn, and that the Sol Caribe Beach, a hotel in Varadero designed for families has just opened. The company, he said, is also upgrading many of its existing properties on the island and adding new facilities such as themed restaurants. 

Meliá was recently reported to now have more than 14,000 rooms in 38 hotels on Cuba.

According to the Spanish hospitality publication, Excelencias, its Cuba-related marketing is particularly focussed on, as priority markets, Canada,  Germany, Spain, and Portugal. The publication noted that it Meliá now has properties in all of the island’s most important destinations including Havana, Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Varadero, Cayo Coco and Cayo Santa María.

Meliá, a privately owned company, is based in Palma de Mallorca in Spain and has been present in Cuba for more than 30 years. It recently reported a 2022 global profit of about US$117mn on operating income of about $1.79bn in revenue. “We want to consolidate all our leadership in countries such as Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Portugal, and Vietnam,” Escarrer recently told the media.

While not investing in Cuba on the same scale, other hotel operators have also expressed confidence of the future of the sector which the island’s Ministry of Tourism says it expects to receive 3.5mn visitors this year. Although the figure is significantly below pre-pandemic levels when the island received 4.3mn visitors, Cuba’s Minister of Tourism  Juan Carlos García recently suggested it is hoping, this year and next, to receive significantly more visitors from Latin America and Russia. (Cuba Briefings 1 and 8 May 2023).

The news agency EFE reported that during FITCuba hotel chains from Canada, Singapore as well as others from Spain and elsewhere in addition to Meliá indicated plans to grow their Cuban portfolio. It quoted the Canadian Blue Diamond Resort hotel chain, which has 28 hotels and nearly 11,000 rooms on Cuba as saying that it was growing in the east in Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, and Holguín and is seeking to combine its offering with properties Trinidad, Havana, Varadero, and other tourist locations. Rafael Villanueva, a locally based manager, told EFE, “We are very optimistic, we see possibilities and we are hopeful that we will achieve the results that we set for ourselves.”

Banyan Tree Hotels Resorts, a Singaporean company, also has plans to expand its brand in Cuba to Havana. It presently has four properties  located on the northern keys in Villa Clara, as do  the Spanish group Barceló which has three properties on the island, and Iberostar, which presently operates 18 hotels and recently expanded its Hotel Gran Trinidad and opened a new property in Cayo Cruz.

In addition, the Indonesian hotel group Archipelago International now operates five hotel complexes in Cuba and will open a sixth in September, the Grand Aston, Varadero. In addition to two in Havana, the company manages properties in Cayo Paredon in Jardines del Rey, the Aston Costa Verde, in Playa Pesquero, Holguin, and the Grand Aston Cayo Las Brujas, on the northern keys off Villa Clara. It recently said that it has plans to develop tourism to Cuba from China, Japan, and South Korea.

In total Cuba has 81,000 hotel rooms across 42 properties that are operated either as joint ventures or under foreign management contracts, principally with Gaviota, a part of the Cuban GAESA group which usually constructs and owns the properties.

The Caribbean Council is able to provide further detail about all of the stories in Cuba Briefing. If you would like a more detailed insight into any of the content of today’s issue, please get in touch.

Photo: Melia Hotels