TOURISM-CUBA: Year 2000 Target of Two Million Visitors Feasible

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 21 1998 (IPS) - The fact that Cuba has already welcomed one million visitors this year boosts expectations that the government’s target of two million will be met in the year 2000.

The tourist industry, which set out on a period of rapid growth in 1989, celebrated its first one million-tourist year in 1996. Last year, the one million mark was met by mid-November.

The steady rise in the number of foreign visitors has led the Ministry of Tourism to set a target of 1.4 million tourists for this year, 1.7 million for next year, and two million for the year 2000.

Deputy Minister of Tourism Eduardo Rodriguez told reporters that the number of visitors from Canada, Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Denmark and Portugal had swelled over the past decade. He said recent growth in the number of tourists from Germany and Britain was especially marked, having risen by 63 and 28 percent, respectively, by late August, compared to last year.

Germany, which pushed Spain out of third place on a list headed by Canada and Italy “has all the conditions necessary for outranking even Canada (as a source of tourists) in 1999,” he underlined.

By the end of the year, several cruise-liners should dock in Cuba, in line with the government’s strategy to complement, rather than compete for, tourism among Caribbean island nations.

The Sun Dream, a 1,150-passenger ship belonging to the British company Air Tours, is planning a Caribbean route, which would include nine annual stopovers in Havana. And the Triton, a 600- passenger ship owned by France’s Nouvelle Frontiere, is expected to arrive in December. From Havana it will travel to Montego Bay in Jamaica, Grand Cayman island, Cancun in Mexico and Punta Frances on the Cuban island of Juventud.

According to the World Tourism Organisation, the Caribbean receives 11 to 12 million visitors a year.

Cuba’s National Office of Statistics estimates that foreign tourists spent some 1.33 billion dollars in Cuba in 1997, when 30,000 rooms were available.

Cuba’s plans for developing its tourist sector are hindered by the nearly four decades-long U.S. economic embargo. President Fidel Castro himself has admitted that the target of 10 million visitors for the year 2010 is high and extremely difficult to meet without tourists from the United States.

Studies indicate that if the blockade imposed by Washington in 1962 is lifted, around 3.8 million people a year could visit the island nation in the early years of the coming century.

In the past few years tourism has outstripped sugar, Cuba’s main export, as top foreign-exchange earner.

Although local authorities have not officially announced this year’s total sugar yield, experts estimate that the 1997-98 harvest amounted to a low 3.1 or 3.2 million tonnes.

Publicity by Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism boasts of 1,200 natural sites of interest, 85 centres of attraction and 256 kms of beaches.