The Cuban government acknowledged that it will not reach the goal of receiving 2.5 million international visitors this year, according to official media reports.
the owner of the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP)Alejandro Gil, assured in the Minister council celebrated this week that 2022 would close with an arrival in the country of around 1.7 million tourists, a figure that he recognized as lower than the objective set by the authorities of the sector, according to a report from the official newspaper Granma.
The also deputy prime minister also pointed out that the country had received 1,074,795 visitors this year, although he did not specify the closing date for that information.
In mid-March, the Cuban Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García, considered a rebound possible that would allow the plan to be fulfilled, and stated that strategies had been drawn up to reactivate the issuing markets of Europe and promote the arrival of travelers from Latin America and the Caribbean, given the possible repercussions that the war in ukraine to the sector.
Cuba: tourism minister believes the goal of 2.5 million visitors in 2022 is possible
If the forecasts come true, the Cuban economy would have received an injection of around 1,159 million dollars, numbers that will obviously be lower in the economic accounts at the end of the year.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the sanctions imposed by the countries of the European Union (EU) to the Eurasian nation, which included the closure of airspace for Russian airlines, was a serious blow to Cuban aspirations, as flights between Moscow and Havana were suspended between the end of February and beginning of October.
The most recent report from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) released in mid-October indicates that Cuba received 1,396,921 travelers in the first 8 months of 2022, the agency said. EFE.
The data represents more than double the 573,944 who visited the Island in the entire previous year, according to official data, but far from the 3.5 million registered in 2019, a year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to ONEI statistics, of the total number of international visitors, 971,456 corresponded to Canada, traditionally the largest source of tourists to the Island. The other markets that contributed the most were the US (60,885), Spain (55,102) and Russia. (38,488), according to data cited by the Spanish agency.
Likewise, the total number of travelers includes 212,485 Cuban emigrants who visited the country in that period.
According to official data, the sightseeing It represents the second most important sector for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Island, and occupies the same position among the branches that report the most foreign exchange earnings to the Cuban economy, which is experiencing a severe crisis, aggravated by the impact of the pandemic, US sanctions and internal difficulties and inefficiencies.
EFE / Oncuba
