25 November 2024
Cuba’s Tourism Minister, Juan Carlos García, has said that “it is essential to have a good high season” as “the country and the Cuban economy need it.” His comments came as a leading Canadian tour operator announced that it is reducing the number of hotels included in its offering to clients visiting Cuba.
Speaking to Granma, García noted that while the challenges and difficulties facing the sector are high, “tourism must be the driving force of the Cuban economy”.
In published remarks, García went on to say that he hoped that the sector will be in a better position this winter than during the high season last year. His ministry has taken, he said, all possible measures to improve outcomes “while creating wholesale tourism supplier companies, some of which are 100% foreign owned.”
He acknowledged, however, that the island will not meet its original goal of receiving 3mn visitors in 2024 because of “the scenario in which tourism has developed this year,” a reference to recent hurricane damage and continuing nationwide power and food supply problems.
Highlights in this issue:
- UK Court of Appeal rules CRF I legitimate creditor in case against former central bank
- Council of State provides few details of progress of macroeconomic reforms
- Finance Ministry reduces import duties to stimulate food supply
- Vice President criticises decentralised authorities’ failure to deliver change in Holguin
- St Petersburg’s governor says city’s trade with Cuba increasing rapidly
His remarks, just as the 2024-25 high season begins, reflect government’s hope that the sector will be able to provide much needed economic activity and foreign exchange, despite falling arrivals numbers from almost every significant visitor market including Canada during this year’s summer season.
Cuba’s Office of National Statistics and Information (ONEI) reported in October that overall international stopover and cruise visitor arrivals in August 2024 declined by 18.2% to 144,981, compared to the 177,265 visitors received in August 2023. ONEI also noted that overall international arrivals in the first eight months of 2024, fell from 1,666,592 in 2023 to 1,608,078 over the same period this year, a decrease of 3.5%.
García went on to tell Granma that recovery from the two recent hurricanes and the earthquake that hit the island have been a priority for tourism, with work at several locations including Cayo Largo del Sur being accelerated to ensure that properties are ready before 30 November to receive their first clients.
He stressed the number of hotel rooms that will be available, which he put at 80,000, observing that 75% are rated four- and five-star, with many he said managed and run by the eighteen foreign hotel chains that operate on the island.
García told Granma that Cuba is diversifying its tourism offering to attract more visitors. It is designing, he said, innovative experiences for visitors wanting nature and adventure tourism, cultural and historical-heritage tourism, and seeking to attract those holding events and incentives, and further developing health tourism, with the objective of showing Cuba has more to offer beyond its beaches.
Subsequently, the publication suggested in an article to mark Cuban Tourism Day that the sector is transforming itself to have a product that will help it remain competitive with other tourism destinations in the Caribbean.
Granma made no mention of occupancy levels. In March this year ONEI reported that in 2023 they stood at just 25%, a very low figure by Caribbean standards, or make any mention of key performance statistics such as revenue per available room, a profitability measure commonly used by the industry internationally. (See Cuba Briefing 11 March 2024)
25 November 2024, Issue 1258
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