Is Cuba Ready for Tourism Development?

By Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

HAVANA TIMES — There is a wonderful growth and development plan in Cuba, which anticipates 103,000 rooms for 2020. We currently have 64,000. If this plan is carried out, this will represent a 60% increase in just 13 years. It is undoubtedly an ambitious and feasible goal, at least technically speaking.

It is very smart to rescue tourism as the leading sector, the engine for general progress in the Cuban economy. We have incredible potential in this field and making the most of it to drive other sectors, using its logistics and capital contribution, is an excellent strategy.

The plan includes building 224 new facilities and to expand another 32, which would add up to 40,000 new rooms. As well as 40 non-hotel projects; 17 of which are focused on recovering Popular Camping Sites, which have begun to dabble in international tourism too. Luckily, our holiday season doesn’t coincide with foreign tourism peak periods, if this weren’t the case, we would lose this leisure activity, just like the rest.

These plans were presented at the conference: “Tourism development and perspectives and its productive linkage with the rest of the economy”; as a part of the Business Fair which was held at EXPOCUBA between May 10th and 25th this year. The plan would represent the ability to receive over 7 million visitors per year; supposing an increase which corresponds to the increase in the number of private rooms which is also growing exponentially.

And the impact it will have on many other sectors is truly immense. Just imagine the volume of building materials that will be needed, hard currency payments by contractors; national building company incomes; the opportunity for agricultural growth to supply double the demand; the opportunity to create jobs; incomes for air and land transport services; car rentals; the impact on state-owned and private restaurant services; and an opportunity for our national industries as there will be a market for the permanent production of our consumable goods such as rum, beer, tobacco, furniture, air conditioning, etc.

Then with the profits generated from tourism, we could reinvest this capital, associated with others, into strategic sectors such as mining, national agriculture, sugar production, light industries, the food industry, transport, the pharmaceutical industry and so on.

A plan like this appears to be viable and promising. And it’s a sign of our great potential. Furthermore, we have a skilled population, spread out pretty much uniformly across the island and a privileged Nature.

Just one draw back

However, the plan can be good and its potential is high, and even so we have a weak spot, which is capable of burying it and converting it into another failure; just like what has happened with so many other plans during these past 58 years of Revolution: the Cuban economic model is dysfunctional, it isn’t autonomous, it’s inefficient and it segregates an important part of our people (emigres).

It’s tangible and the changes that have been made are so timid and shallow that they don’t even encourage it to work, not even in the slightest. Not surprisingly, Raul Castro hasn’t been able to give us a favorable result after over a decade in power. Instead, the country has entered a new crisis, in spite of the small push tourism has given the economy after diplomatic relations were reestablished with the US and Obama’s visit.

The recent changes to the Cuban business system, supposedly meant to naturalize the demands of the growth the government longs, are so fake that they don’t even appear on paper. In practice, it continues to be the same centralized, static and horizontal system it has always been; which doesn’t make our economic leaders real business people, just simple puppets in the political-bureaucratic apparatus.

Listening to them talk about the subject at the conference, you can pick up on the theater show that has been created to excite foreign investors; none of whom can decide to take advantage of any opportunities, they can only do so if they are authorized to do so and receive financing from their respective ministeries. Like we say here, the pyramid in upside down here in Cuba.

This great problem, plus the limitations on private sector growth, as well as the restrictions of the US blockade and national demands of a political and institutional nature, minimize an opportunity which truly appears to be extraordinary.

Inevitably, everything stems from this, for leading any national effort from a solid base of democracy and respect for human rights. Aspiring to develop the country with magical and arbitrary solutions, like a boom in tourism or the discovery of abundant oil reserves in the Gulf, is uncertain and inadequate.

Is that what Raul’s plan depends on, to then sell us the fake idea that the Revolution is successful and feasible? If they don’t wake up soon, or if we don’t make them wake up, or we rescue our own sovereignty, we will never prosper. Similarly, a boom in tourism is uncertain without the end of the embargo.

It’s clear that due to the favorable conditions today, tourism will grow to some extent, but not to the levels it promises and which our great potential allows. Clearly, Cuba isn’t ready, with its current methods of social organization, for such growth; nor is it ready to take advantage of the great range of possibilities that this will then offer us. It’s really a true crime to continue on as we are, stuck in time despite so much determination to move forward.