Cuba is struggling to reawaken its tourism industry after months of lethargy due to the pandemic from coronaviruswhile commuters stay away, threatening to derail the government’s plan to pull the economy out of a deepening crisis.
The Caribbean island, long a popular destination in the region, has been betting this year on tourism to boost economic growth of 4% after the pandemic sharply reduced production, causing shortages of food, medicine and power cuts that contributed to the largest anti-government protests since Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.
Unlike many regional neighbors, some analysts believe that Cuba erred on the side of caution in response to the Covid-19. He kept his borders largely closed, with a few exceptions, until November 15 last year, after having vaccinated most of his population.
That decision caused Cuba to attract 67% fewer visitors in 2021 compared to 2020, and less than 10% of the 4.3 million arrivals in 2019, according to official data. Meanwhile, the Caribbean as a whole saw a 63% growth in the number of tourists in 2021, while Cuba remained largely off limits, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.
The data indicates that travelers have been slow to return to Cuba since the borders were reopened. This year in January, a popular month to travel to the Caribbean, only 84,000 tourists visited the island, 80% less than the 393,762 in 2020, and well below the pace needed to reach the country’s goal of 2.5 million visitors in 2022.
Empty beaches and hotels could be another blow to Cuba’s ailing and inefficient state economy that relies on foreign exchange derived from tourism that represents 10% of GDP to buy basic products such as food and medicine on the global market.
Cuban tour experts and operators say Cuba will struggle to make up lost ground during the pandemic, plagued in large part by persistent US sanctions that have all but eliminated travel between Cuba and the important US market.
The measures adopted by the former president of the United States donald trumpas he sought to take a tougher line on Cuba, included ending cruise ship docking, restricting flights and blacklisting hotels and other entities.
The tourism industry’s hopes that Trump’s successor, Joe Bidenwould repeal sanctions have yet to bear fruit, and the Cuban government’s heavy-handed response to last year’s protests drew a sharp rebuke from the administration.
News about the protests, backlash and economic problems is also likely to postpone the return of tourists from outside the United States, said Paolo Spadoni, an expert on Cuban economics at Augusta University in Georgia.
That includes Canadian and Latin American travelers, who previously visited the island frequently, he added.
“All those negative headlines didn’t help Cuba attract more tourists,” he said.
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
Pablo Pérez, a 53-year-old man who sells handicrafts to tourists in central Havana, said the bad news amid the pandemic has unfairly doomed Cuba.
“It has hurt us financially,” Pérez said. “Cruise ships are gone. There are many hotels that were built but are still empty because tourism has decreased,” she noted.