CUBA-ECONOMY: Cheers as Tourist Numbers Rise

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Sep 5 1996 (IPS) - Tourists are arriving here in record numbers, boosting the nation’s ailing economy, and Cban officials are hopeful of welcoming one million visitors by the end of the year.

“One million seems more real today than it did when we made our projections at the beginning of 1996,” beamed one official at the Ministry of Tourism.

A total of 745,000 tourists visited Cuba last year, injecting an estimated one billion dollars into Cuba’s overall economy, giving rise to the target of one million tourists this year, and 2.2 million in the year 2000. Official studies indicated that tourist income could triple early in the new century, and the industry will replace sugar as the country’s chief source of income.

Vice-President Carlos Lage reported that in the first six months of this year, tourism rose 46 percent with respect to the same period in 1995. He said the industry grew 17 percent a year since 1991, and the growth seen in the first half of 1996 was above and beyond that increase.

“Everyone wants to come to the Caribbean; Cuba is a very good option in this part of the world because of the prices, and because there is a lot to see besides beaches,” said one Italian tourist.

Italian tourism to Cuba rose 97 percent this year, making Italy the chief source of visitors, followed by Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.

While Argentina is the biggest source of tourists from Latin America, tourism from Colombia and Mexico has shown the greatest growth. Some 16,000 Mexican tourists visited in the space of three months, indicating the start of that country’s economic recovery.

The main reasons tourists interviewed in surveys carried out by the Tourism Ministry’s research team gave for choosing Cuba were “the idiosyncracies of its people” and the “sun and beaches.”

Cuba has crystal-clear water and white sand beaches, as do many other Caribbean islands. But it also offers attractions such as Old Havana and the city of Trinidad, which were declared sites of “humanity’s heritage” by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Some come to Havana in search of Alejo Carpentier’s “city of pillars,” the magic world of Wilfredo Lam’s paintings, Ernest Hemingway’s favourite bar, Floridita, or, simply, Cuban music or simply for the nostalgia of a Socialist utopia.

The downside has been tourists who visit the country in search of sex and

a survey carried out by the Italian tourism magazine Viaggiare put Cuba ahead of other poplar destinations for sex tours – Thailand, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines. Local authorities insist they will not exploit that type of tourism, but will stick to pushing the country’s beaches, and other natural and cultural attractions.

Tourism Ministry officials said that at the end of June, the tourist/day average – number of tourists multiplied by the length of stay – was above 3.9 million, a nearly 30 percent growth with respect to the same period last year.

By late May, more than 435,000 tourists had visited Cuba, spending an average of 87 dollars a day, and at times filling Havana hotels to capacity.

Cuba’s tourism sector employs more than 50,000 people, and fixed costs dropped from 0.73 cents per dollar invested in 1995 to 0.67 so far this year. The industry is becoming a stimulus for the recovery of other sectors of the economy, such as light industry and the food industry. But executives in the sector say such indicators could be much better, and that it is time to exchange confidence in the “Cuban miracle” for a truly competitive level in the Caribbean region.

“The sector is far from functioning with the efficiency it should have, neither in marketing” nor in the exploitation of its potential hotel capacity, said Antonio Esquivel, the Tourism Ministry’s delegate in Havana.

According to authorities, the sector’s chief problems are the quality of service, and the political ups-and-downs that can affect the flow of visitors and investment, which should guarantee a minimum of 5,400 new rooms a year until the year 2000.