By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Mar 21 1997 (IPS)

A surprising silence from government officials on the state of Cuba’s burgeoning tourism industry has led to speculation that performance has not met expectation.

Accustomed to the speedy delivery of any good news from government offices, financial observers are wondering just how many tourists did come to Cuba during the recent “high” season.

Government-controlled newspapers continue to print stories about foreign investment in the tourist industry and the new hotels that are slated for construction. There have been articles about the income provided by tourists during the 1996 season but, so far, nothing has been said about this year’s performance.

Last year, more than a million tourists brought 1.3 billion dollars to Cuba.

A tourist industry official says: “One never knows here. The silence could be for the opposite of what we suspect. It’s possible that everything is going fine and that the government simply doesn’t want to inspire excessive hope by reporting good news too early.”

The Cuban Tourism Ministry had estimated that 450,000 visitors would arrive here during the “high” season – which began in December and concludes this month. By the end of 1997, it hoped that 1.2 million tourists will have visited Cuba.

Some experts, however, branded as “unrealistic” predictions of an average growth rate of 15 per cent per year, and said such a lofty figure could prove to be very far from reality.

One tourism analyst opined that “the accelerated growth of Cuba’s tourist industry began from ground zero. Therefore, we should be more realistic and align our expectations with the growth rate of other countries in the area whose expansion is more moderate.”

Cuba has a number of weak points when it comes to the development of tourism, such as marked deficiencies in the service sector. These shortcomings erode Cuba’s competitiveness and cause many tourist to go elsewhere after visiting Cuba once. At the same time, authorities have criticized delays and poor quality in the construction of new tourist facilities. To insure tourism’s sustained growth, it is necessary that such facilities be well-built and ready to receive guests in a timely manner.

Cuba plans to offer 49,556 hotel rooms by the end of the decade, one third the number planned for its mature tourist market. To keep pace with this planned growth it will be necessary to invest two billion pesos which, at the official exchange rate, is the equivalent of two billion dollars.

To secure funding for the development program, the Tourism Ministry continually negotiates with foreign investors, giving the green light to a wide variety of investment vehicles and development partnerships.

Sources at the Center for Studies of the Cuban Economy say that the outlook for tourist development is based on 67 centers with a potential for 200,000 rooms accommodating 10 million tourists who will contribute between 10 and 15 billion dollars annually to Cuba’s economy. A meeting of economists in Havana in early 1995 sounded the alert over the intrinsic insecurity of an economic sector whose health depends on political and economic conjunctions that may be divorced from development plans.

The 1994 “boat people crisis,” which produced a massive exodus of Cuban nationals, triggered a decline in the number of tourists who visited Cuba, a setback that was not overcome until the following August.

On the other hand, dire predictions of a tourism turndown failed to materialize following the downing of two small planes by Cuba’s Air Force last February. Surprisingly, the episode did not have any direct impact on Cuba’s leisure industry.

However, Cuban experts point out that the “small plane incident” finally resulted in the Helms-Burton Act, which is starting to have indirect influence on Cuba’s tourist industry.

Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage noted earlier this month that “the economy is behaving as predicted” and went on to say that the performance of key sectors such as tourism, nickel and tobacco has been “good.”

The Cuban economic crisis which began in 1990 has affected all sectors of the Cuban economy, resulting in a 34.3 per cent decline in gross national product between 1989 and 1993.

The GNP registered a small 0.7 per cent recovery in 1994, with growth rising 2.5 per cent in 1995 and 7.8 per cent in 1996. Predicted growth for 1997 is 5 per cent.

Cuban authorities have bet that tourism can be a relatively rapid means of overcoming the economic crisis, and according to some estimates, its impact on the Cuban economy had already – by 1994 – rivalled the income generated by sugar, Cuba’s foremost source of income.

According to Lage, “tourism is clearly consolidating itself as the industry of the future which will provide the fundamental stimulus for Cuba’s comprehensive development. The impact of tourism will not be limited to tourist dollars, but will ramify into the rest of Cuba’s economy, creating collateral jobs.”

According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), Cuba displays one of the planet’s most dynamic tourist growth patterns, with average annual expansion of 17 per cent. Elsewhere in Latin America, the Caribbean growth rate is 6.8 per cent; the South American growth rate is 8.8 per cent, and Central America’s tourist industry enjoys a 3.9 per cent rate.

The only portion of the leisure industry to escape the Cuban government’s official silence is the conference sector. At the end of February, official predictions concerning this sector put the likely number of 1997 tourists at 65,000.

However, official sources say that these estimates are viewed as “very conservative.” In this category 470 events planned for 1997 – among them congresses, festivals and conferences – which will result in some 12 million dollars of income.

According to 1995 statistics from the World Tourism Organization, more than a third of the tourist industry is made up of people participating in conferences, or similar large group meetings. The WTO listed Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Cuba as the leaders in the tourist sector in Latin American, a region that garners a scant 5 per cent of global tourist dollars.

However, although Cuba intends to diversify its tourist offerings, it must pay close attention to the WTO’s assessment of tourist desires if it wishes to succeed.

Francesco Frangialli, the Secretary General of the World Tourist Organization, says that “data indicate that tourists prefer destinations which, in addition to sun and sand, offer cultural activities and sports events.”

Frangialli also points out that the Caribbean region reported stagnant growth in 1996, with Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic holding their ranks as the region’s preferred destinations. Cuba and the Bahamas also appeared on the list of places favoured by tourists.

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