MIAMI, United States. — Despite the serious economic crisis that Cuba is going through, the island’s regime aspires to receive 3.5 million tourists in 2023, a figure that is still far from the more than four million that visited the country in 2018 and 2019.
Visiting Madrid (Spain), where he participates in the International Tourism Fair (Fitur)the Cuban minister of the sector, Juan Carlos García Granda, explained to the Agency EFE It is an ambitious goal, but not impossible.
“We have set ourselves a goal that is also difficult, of 3.5 million tourists. Our country is prepared for the more than four million that it always had in recent times, like the rest of the countries that want to reach the figures for 2019, before the pandemic”, explained García Granda.
The official acknowledged that the US sanctions have depressed tourism in Cuba, since, only due to geographical proximity, the northern country should be one of the main issuing markets of the Caribbean island.
In this sense, the Cuban minister referred to “all the limitations we have on the largest issuing market in the world, our natural market, which is the United States, whose citizens, due to the blockade, are prohibited from visiting our country.”
“Despite this scenario, we are not going to stop working to reach the goal of 3.5 million. According to what we have seen at this fair, it is an achievable goal,” García Granda told EFE.
In 2022 Cuba barely received 1.7 million tourists and fell far short of the planned 2.5 million.
According to official figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information of Cuba (ONEI), between 2008 and 2018 the Caribbean country showed a sustained growth in the arrival of tourists, which was slowed down in 2019 with a slight decrease, and which fell ostensibly from 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.
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