Havana Cuba. — The physiognomy of the historic center of Old Havana is changing. Large buildings, some heritage, are remodeled to be converted into more hotels that will be added to the existing ones in the approximately two kilometers of territory.
Many wonder: If the current hotels are not filled, why so much waste of resources in these times of deep economic crisis?
Touring the central Paseo del Prado allows you to see the new projects underway. A very important one is called Pasaje Payret, which covers about 300 square meters. It is located in the Prado, surrounded by Teniente Rey, Zulueta and San José streets. Only the famous Payret movie theater will remain there without demolishing it.
At the end of there, along Zulueta street, he lived in a room William Cabrera Infante when he arrived with his family in Havana.
Another property being remodeled is the La Metropolitana building, where there were company offices and law firms. With fourteen floors, it has an extension of half a block and is surrounded by O´Reilly, Aguacate and Empedrado streets.
The La Corona tobacco factory will also be a lodging center. The place, located next to the old Presidential Palace, has 100 square meters. Nothing more than its exterior façade is used and it will be called Hotel Corona.
The largest of all these renovations are the unused Customs docks with all their breakwaters, which allowed the docking of large ships. Except for the small part that serves for the arrival of the cruise ships, which have not entered for a long time, the construction will be like a kind of large hotel with a marina.
On the corner of Obispo and Cuba streets is a majestic building that was the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance and Prices. The Real Hacienda hotel will be built there.
The area is already full of hotels. On Prado and Malecón is the Hotel Paseo del Prado, which has now passed to the Canadian chain Blue Diamond under the name of Royalton. A hundred meters away is the gigantic Packard Hotel. Next to the Fausto theater, the Hotel Regis is being remodeled, and on the next corner is the renowned and large-scale Hotel Sevilla.
The Central Park is surrounded by the hotel of the same name, La Manzana de Gómez, today the Manzana Kempinski hotel, behind the Plaza and in front of the historic Inglaterra, Telégrafo, and the nearby Gran Hotel. Missing, of course, Saratogarecently destroyed by an explosion.
A simple arithmetic operation tells us that in about 13 blocks, about 1,300 meters, there are 11 large hotels.
There are some hotels such as Armadores de Santander, in front of the Luz dock, the Ambos Mundos, on Obispo Street, where Ernest Hemingway lived for a time, the Florida Hotel, also in Obispo, and other smaller ones.
The list would be endless if we enumerated all the self-employed tenants of houses and rooms, because wherever we walk we find “for rent” signs.
The Cuban regime admits that in the middle of this year they were about to reach one million tourists and they hope to reach two million by the end of 2022, an insufficient amount for so many hotels.
It is necessary to point out that, as a policy designed by the late Maximum Leader, foreign visitors were previously directed towards the so-called “tourist poles” to separate them from the population and prevent it from being contaminated with capitalist ideas. Therefore, the bulk of the hotel industry is today on the beaches and keys that surround the Island.
Almost all the work carried out in Old Havana is carried out by the military construction units, which belong to the GAESA military conglomerate.
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