Cuba: Tourism First, Housing Recovery Later
HAVANA TIMES – The Cuban government has acknowledged that it will only be able to address 50% of the damage to roofs of homes caused by hurricanes Oscar and Rafael, as well as the earthquakes on November 10, 2024.
During a meeting on November 17, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Joaquin Alonso Vasquez, reminded that, in addition to the damages caused by these natural disasters, there are still cases of people affected by weather events in Pinar del Río (Hurricane Ian in 2022) and Guantánamo (Hurricane Matthew in 2017).
In contrast to the limited resources allocated to the repair of damaged homes, the tourism sector is recovering quickly, with the goal of being ready in the first days of December to receive tourists for the high season of 2024-2025.
This was confirmed by Juan Carlos García, the minister in charge of the Tourism who assured Granma newspaper that “the country and the Cuban economy” need the vitality of the hotel industry. Although he acknowledged that they will not meet the target of 3 million visitors in 2024, they are focusing their efforts and resources on improving services for tourists.
Fewer Tourists, More Hotel Investment
Although tourism in Cuba is practically the only one in the region that has not recovered since the 2019 pandemic, the government prioritizes what it calls “the engine of the economy.”
Despite the low occupancy rate – 28.4% in the first half of 2024 – resources have not been allocated to the recovery of other important sectors, such as agriculture or energy, nor to public services like health and education, despite daily reports of poor conditions in schools and hospitals.
Economist Pedro Monreal reported that “from 2020 to June 2024, investment primarily associated with tourism (the sum of ‘hotels and restaurants’ and ‘business services and real estate activity’) averaged 38.9% of the country’s total investment, compared to 9.4% for investment in electricity, gas, and water.”
The Canadian tour operator agency Sunwing, one of the largest sources of vacationers to Cuba, eliminated 26 hotels from its offerings on the island due to quality issues.
Samantha Taylor, the head of marketing, told Pax News that the hotels did not meet the expectations of what guests truly wanted to experience and acknowledged that prices had risen while quality had declined.
Regarding the loss of trust among Canadians in Cuban tourism, she mentioned that they had received cancellations and complaints from clients because the infrastructure did not meet expectations.
“What does a five-star hotel in Cuba mean? What’s to expect at a three-star hotel? What we see in our customers’ comments is that Canadians want transparency in what they are receiving. They don’t want surprises,” said Taylor.
Quality Issues Known to Cuban Authorities
Problems related to the quality of offerings are well known to Cuban authorities. Tourism minister Garcia stated that, to improve the conditions and services, “they created wholesale tourism provider companies, some of them with 100% foreign capital.”
Still, clients maintain questions regarding the quality of state-run tourist services, and some agencies suggest booking tours and trips through private businesses, which also guarantee electricity with generators and honestly explain to tourists what to expect from their trip and what they need to bring.
According to Travel Weekly, several agencies acknowledged that cancellations remain minimal but qualify the current moment as one of the worst for tourism on the island.
Recently, the Minister of Tourism Juan Carlos Garcia told the Tass news agency that soon there will be hotels on the island built and managed by Russian companies, or others that will be managed by Russian entrepreneurs. Currently, there are 18 foreign hotel chains managing properties in Cuba.
It seems logical that the Cuban government would focus on Russian tourists (the second-largest source of visitors in 2024) when countries like Canada, France, or the UK advise their nationals not to visit the island due to power outages.
The promise of the marketing director of the Ministry of Tourism, Giana Galindo Henríquez, to guarantee backup generators for hotels is not enough. She told Tass that the impact of the nationwide blackout on October 18, 2024, was minimal in the sector, but it led to tourists being relocated to hotels with electricity service.
The Spanish tourism-focused media outlet Preferente published that “tour operators, grouped in Seto, an industry organization, have shown their absolute concern because telephone communications and the Internet network are very unstable.”
The report acknowledged that, despite government efforts, the recovery of normalcy in Cuba is no longer in the hands of the government.
One month after the first total blackout, Lessner Gomez, director of the Cuban Tourism Office in Toronto, assured that 100% of the hotel facilities in Cuba had electricity.
Another point contrasting this information is that hospitals have suffered critical moments due to issues with their energy generators during extended power outages.
Homes vs. Hotels
According to preliminary data, more than 46,000 homes were affected by hurricanes Oscar (late October) and Rafael (early November), as well as the earthquakes on November 10, 2024. The majority of the damage was to the roofs of homes, and nearly 18% were total collapses.
While many of the affected people are currently living in tents donated by international organizations, the Cuban government is focusing on its 80,000 hotel rooms.
On several occasions, social media users have asked the government to use hotel facilities for the evacuation of people at risk due to natural disasters.
However, evacuations to the homes of friends and family are becoming more common. During Hurricane Oscar, for example, more than 70% of evacuations were carried out in the homes of acquaintances.
With blackouts lasting 12 hours or more across the country, homes with collapsed roofs, people who have lost almost everything due to natural disasters, and a population that takes to the streets every day to find food, the government is focused on attracting tourists and offering them new experiences.
The image in the cities is repeated: dark and impoverished streets, lit only by luxurious hotels that most Cubans cannot access.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
Russian women from the working class are nice and very clean
The rich men from Russia are used to getting what they want in Russia as it is a very corrupt country and women do not seem to have equal rights. The Cuban gov should not be counting on tourists to keep the economy going. A much better idea of it was not for all the young health care workers leaving with be building long term assistant living units with medical care for people from other countries including Canada and the United States
But now Cuba is in such bad shape I would not trust Cuban health care anymore.
With regard to Russian tourists, here’s my personal experience during my last trip. I look like I could be Cuban. Even Cubans greet me on the streets in Havana with “Asere”! Anyway, I was in the waiting area of an upscale restaurant with my Cuban family and friends waiting for my table to be cleaned when a Russian group came in after me. When the waitress said that my group was waiting to be seated before the Russians, the Russian man in charge of this group said he should come first because he was a tourist! I stood up and in my most imperial English voice told him that was “bulls#%t”! I had been waiting and I would be seated first. This Russian guy looked at me with this stupid grin and apologized in English to me. He said that he “thought that I was Cuban”. I said that my group was Cuban, and that shouldn’t make a difference. I was pissed at the arrogance this guy so openly was showing. Anyway, the poor waitress could feel the tension and promised the Russian his group would be seated in “un momentico”. Crisis averted.
What is up with the Russian people, especially their men? They believe the less refined they are, the more macho or manly they are. They are truly proud at their lack of manners. Spitting on the floor, belching loud in public. The Russian men treat every female hotel worker like they are prostitutes and talk to them like indentured servants. Cuba, do you really want tourism to come back? Then don’t put normal Westerners with manners next to Russian men that are having a belching contest. Your tourism will truly die.
It would be dishonest to ignore and absolve the US of the extraordinary damage its economic warfare has caused in Cuba. In socioeconomic terms, it is as severe as the destruction of Gaza.
It would also be dishonest to ignore and absolve the Cuban government of the damage its errors, corruption, incompetence and bizarre capitalist restoration are causing to Cuba.
The abandonment of Cuban agriculture and the insane mass importation of food items from the United States and Europe is a major source of the impoverishment of Cuba.
The second insane act of ignoring basic infrastructure-building, especially a modern electric plant and significant urban renewal, and diverting massive amounts into new hotel construction at a time the whole of Havana seems to be crumbling, borders on criminality. And criminal corruption it might very well be in the light of the hush-hushed currency trafficking case of the former Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, rightfully the most despised person in Cuba for his imposition of the MLC currency system and dollarization in Cuba. An Al-Jazeera documentary on Cuba raised the possibility that the real motive for the unnecessary construction of new hotels could be a concealed plan to privatize these assets in the future to the leadership and its cronies, as was done elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and other former Eastern bloc countries. The cost of one luxury hotels could have built an electric plant!
In Havana, in contrast to the luxury hotels being gleefully-constructed, are medievally-decrepit “Agro” markets where the suffering Cuban people leave their crumbling houses to buy food amidst a swarm of flies, and muddy earthen floors! In all the years of the revolution, nobody seems to have thought of the necessity of building modern supermarkets in a city like Havana.
North Korea also suffers from severe embargoes and sanctions but what a difference the cities of Pyongyang and Havana have between them! Kim Jong-Un may be a ruthless, crazed dictator but he doesn’t play around with infrastructure!
Not sure why they haven’t learnt their lesson partnering with Russia. The noose will tighten even more. I stayed at a couple resorts with Russians and it was a week of hell. Sounds like we won’t be going back. Which saddens me because the the Cuban people are wonderful. They are living in some sort of social science experiment.
It’s sad that some people still believe their tourist dollars will save Cuba and once again make it the jewel of the Caribbean. Covid hurt the island no doubt about that fact. However, it was Covid that helped expose the precarious situation of a country rife with corruption after 60 some years of useless revolution that has turned Cuba into a country living off of, and begging for donations to enable the meager survival of it’s people.
After many trips exploring the island, I am through. My eyes have been opened and the magic is gone. May the people who frequent resorts and take suitcases of donations continue to assuage their conscience’s by believing they are making a major difference in people’s lives. A band-aid can’t cure cancer.
Havana died with Covid.
I am booked for my 34th trip to Cuba from Canada in the last 5 years. I suspect this will be my last one. Cuba has been crumbling quickly over those 5 years. I fear for the Cuban people. And quite frankly, it is my experience that the Russian tourists there, are rude, I’ll mannered, don’t tip, don’t respect line ups , and are quite disrespectful to their Cuban hosts.
If those are the type of people Cuba wants to attract, then I will go somewhere else to spend my money.