Varadero Hotels Record 2011 Losses
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 19 — Nearly a dozen hotels at the Varadero beach resort recorded economic losses in 2011. This information was made known yesterday in a meeting of the tourism workers’ union in the province of Matanzas.
This year the resort was affected by a decline in the number of planned tourist days, as well as by delays in investment and working capital shortages, said delegates at the meeting.
Although the leisure industry in Matanzas did not generate its full potential revenue, Varadero remains the most internationally prestigious Cuban tourist center and is the one that brings the most money into the country, reported the Trabajadores weekly newspaper.
Were there really losses, or were the reported losses a cover for tourist money being pilfered by state hotel wage and salary employees?
I think that Cuba should experiment with hotels that are owned–or leased from the state–by worker cooperative corporations on the Mondragon model. Such experiments would of course have to be promulgated by the state, and the worker-associates would have to be encouraged and assisted by the state in various ways. Great efficiency however might be achieved, and excellent records would be kept, reported and monitored by the state. Ideally, open-minded PCC cadre would be among the cooperative entrepreneurial leadership.
How would the state get its share of hotel profits? This is easy to answer. The state would take an appropriate–but non-controlling–share of the hotel corporation’s non-voting stock. It would receive dividends each quarter, at the same time as the worker-associates distribute dividends to themselves.