MADRID, Spain. – The Cuban government continues to bank on welcoming 2.5 million tourists this year, in spite of the fact that tourism in the island has not managed to recover since Cuba reopened its borders on November 15.
“The country will not give up ono its goal to welcome close to 2.5 million tourists in 2022,” stated Cuba’s Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, during the Year- on-Balance meeting at the National Hotel and Tourism Workers Labor Union (SNTHT, by its Spanish acronym) this Monday.
According to a report from the official Cuban News Agency (Agencia Cubana de Noticias, ACN, by its Spanish acronym), the minister indicated that “one of the largest challenges of this sector is the professionalism and quality of the Cuban product provided, wherein personalized attention to the client and language mastery are incentivized.”
According to García Granda, strategies have been developed to stimulate tourism from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as for reigniting the European market.
The minister also indicated that, to that end, Cuba must boost “its national attributes and reflect the solidarity and idiosyncrasies typical of the Cuban people.”
He also stressed that tourism centers must optimize their sources of supplies by entering into agreements with agricultural producers and link up with micro, small and medium-size companies that provide maintenance services and facility improvements.
Despite the regime’s “optimism”, statistics for January of this year indicated 80% fewer tourists with respect to 2020. The sector’s workers themselves have expressed their preoccupation with empty hotels and beaches.
Add to it that the Russian market has plummeted as a result of flight cancellations by Russian airlines on account of that country’s invasion of Ukraine. That market is the principal source of tourists for Cuba.
Recently, Paolo Spadoni, an expert on the Cuban economy on the faculty of Augusta University in Georgia (U.S.), stated that “the loss of the Russian market in 2022 will have a very significant negative effect on the Cuban economy, and on the tourism industry in particular.”
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