During the first quarter of 2018, 95,520 U.S. citizens visited Cuba, which was 40 percent fewer than came in the same quarter of 2017. This “is hurting this island’s access to hard cash and setting back the effort to reestablish ties between U.S. citizens and Cubans.“.[1]
The Cubans most adversely affect by this decline are ”the very Cubans the Trump administration has vowed to defend here — small-business owners looking to inject a dose of the free market into the economy.” They are “Airbnb hosts, the owners of small restaurants and art galleries, and tour operators.” Indeed, “unlike many European visitors to Cuba, the American newcomers largely eschewed the package tours that corralled tourists at big, beachfront hotels and assembly-line restaurants. Instead, the Americans spent more time exploring the colonial streets of Old Havana on their own” and patronizing the newer privately-owned businesses
Yes, there has been an increase in foreigners arriving on the island on cruise ships, 177,000 this quarter versus 38,000 in 2017’s first quarter, but they “spent relatively little money onshore.”[2]
Another positive development for Cuban tourism generally, but not the Cuban entrepreneurs, according to the Reuters article, are recent announcements of new hotels by foreign “hospitality companies including Spain’s Melia Hotels International and Iberostar Hotels & Resorts; Singapore’s Banyan Tree Holdings Ltd., Apollo Global Management LLC’s Diamond Resorts International Inc.;” and “Louvre Hotels SAS, a French subsidiary of China’s state-owned Jinn Jiang International Hotels Development Co, one of the world’s largest.”
The construction of such new hotels, however, is “generally carried out jointly with the Cuban Government and especially with the military , which controls a good part of the island’s tourism sector.” For example, “there are currently five new five-star hotels under construction in Havana, owned by the Gaviota Corporation -a military company-, and will be administered by foreign firms.”[3]
=========================================
[1] Faiola, In Cuba, the Great American tourism boom goes bust, Wash. Post (May 11, 2018); Drop in Foreign Tourists for Cuba, dwkcommentaries.com April 25, 2018).
[2] Reuters, Despite Hurricanes and Trump, Cuba Retains Charm for Foreign Tourism Firms, N.Y. Times (May 11, 2018).
[3] The Government and the military will continue to make cash with tourism, Diario de Cuba (May 11, 2018).
