Cuban tourism sector is buried by COVID-19 and bad government strategies

The mismanagement of the pandemic and the terrible strategies supported by the Cuban government have buried the tourism industry on the island, and 2021 is expected to be catastrophic for the sector, the worst in 30 years, said the president of the advisory firm Havana Consulting Group, Emilio Morales.

Tourism in Cuba is bogged down due to the chaotic handling of the pandemic, poor economic strategies and the poor use of financial resources by the Cuban government, highlights a new report by Havana Consulting Group.

Not even the investment of more than US $ 17,000 million in the last six years has served to rescue the tourism sector, added the Cuban economic analyst.

The report forecasts a very gloomy outlook for the Cuban tourism industry in 2021, with a drop already at the end of last July of 85%, compared to the same period in 2020 and 95% compared to 2019.

In other words, the data shows “a literally dead industry,” he said.

In decline since before the pandemic

The reality is that the Cuban tourism sector “has been practically closed for 20 months”, a key industry that was already in decline before the pandemic, specifically since 2018, when there was a 10.84% ​​decrease in European tourism (Germany, Italy, England, Spain and France), specified the report from the Miami-based firm.

And in 2019 this trend continued with a fall of almost double in this sector, collapsing 20.59% compared to 2018.

In total, for the period 2017-2019, the total value of visits to Cuba by the five main European issuers mentioned declined 29.20%, while the North American market only registered a very slight decrease of 0.09%.

The chaotic handling of the pandemic by the Cuban government, added to poor economic strategies and terrible use of financial resources, have buried the tourism sector on the island, the report insists in its conclusions.

Factors that also influence the collapse of international tourism are the shortage of food and medicine, the impact of COVID-19 and the “high inflation” generated by the new regulation.

To this must be added the “brutal repression” unleashed by the Cuban regime to “crush” the peaceful protests that occurred in more than fifty cities on the island in July.

In contrast to the deep economic crisis that Cuba is going through, the region’s competing countries in terms of tourism “are recovering rapidly.”

In fact, Morales’ forecast points to the arrival this year of “barely 400,000 tourists”, only 10% of the 4 million that he foresees in countries like the Dominican Republic for the same year.

“It is the worst thing I have seen in my life as an economic strategy and control of the pandemic. It is total incompetence, ”he told Efe.

The pandemic, “gravedigger” of tourism

Cuba, however, will begin a gradual reopening of the country and international tourism as of November 15, with the beginning of the supposed de-escalation by COVID-19.

In Morales’ opinion, the opening scheduled for November is nothing more than a “desperate call to raise dollars”, since “reversing this situation in the short term” is an “impossible task”.

In this context of reopening the tourism sector, the Cuban government estimates that it will attract some 100,000 visitors for the winter season, a figure, in the opinion of the consultant, “really insignificant” that barely reaches 10% of what the tourist usually received. Cuban market before the pandemic.

It is a “dizzying decline” in the arrival of visitors to the island in the last three years, he insisted.

Thus, in 2020 tourism declined 74.6% in relation to 2019, when the arrival on the island of just over a million visitors was registered, almost 3/4 less than in 2019, when the figure stood at 4′275,558 travelers.

Three consecutive years of decline in tourism is a very alarming figure for the expert, an indicator, he says, that the Government does not have any strategy, that it errs and “there is an incorrect and bad design and a lack of attention to tourists.”

“And the pandemic has put a tombstone on the tourism industry,” he said, to affirm: “I don’t think the tourism sector can recover in three or four years.”