Cuba aspires to receive almost 3 million visitors in 2023, after increasing arrivals this year by 250% compared to 2021 and despite “the obstacles posed by the United States”, which right now restricts entry to its territory to people who have been in Cuba, Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda said on Tuesday.
García addressed the media during a visit to the World Travel Market, which is being held until Wednesday in London with the presence of some 2,500 exhibitors from more than one hundred countries.
The minister said that his priority is “to rescue the largest number of visitors” after the pandemic, for which the country has prepared by controlling covid-19 with its own vaccines and the entire population immunized, he explains.
So far this year, the Island has already received 1.2 million visitors and could reach 1.7 million by the end of the year, compared to 4.5 before the health crisis, the official points out.
“It is not everything we would have wanted, but the restrictions that had to be maintained on the arrival of countries until April did not allow sufficient confidence in the issuing markets,” lamented García, who anticipated, however, that these months of “November and December will be good.”
“We are being attractive, the tour operation sees demand, despite the fact that the blockade exerted by the United States against Cuba and the effort they make to hinder its economic development makes them constantly think about measures to affect the arrival of visitors to the island,” declared.
The number of workers planned to repair the thermoelectric plant exceeds 800 troops, for which the Government has not been able to guarantee “logistical assurance”
“For example, now they are conditioning that any citizen who visits Cuba does not have the right to enter the United States with an electronic tourist visa, but must go to the US consulate or embassy to obtain another one,” he criticized.
García assured that the power outages that affect the Cuban population, which his government “works very hard” to solve, “do not harm tourism,” since the private sector is prepared.
“The private and state network that is dedicated to tourist activity is preparing for energy contingency situations with emergency generator sets or photovoltaic cells, because we also have environmental objectives,” he assured.
García argued that his mission is to attract more visitors precisely in order to generate income that “contributes to economic reactivation.”
“Tourism serves to reactivate thermoelectric plants, to buy more food, to give raw materials to producers, to give more well-being and quality of life to the people in general,” he said. García’s statements coincide with the announcement, by the directors of the Antonio Guiteras power plant, in Matanzas, of the execution of 320 maintenance tasks in its facilities.
The repairs, which began this Saturday, are focused on “gaining stability for December,” stated the Cuban News Agency (ACN). The number of workers planned to repair the thermoelectric plant exceeds 800 troops, for whom the Government has not been able to guarantee “logistical assurance”.
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