In order to promote its renewed tourism product, Cuba is currently entering a circuit of fairs in the sector, in both hemispheres, the most recent being the appointments in Brussels and Panama. Such intense activity has occurred since the start of this year, which comes with new challenges.
In the reactivation of the industry after the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, all the recipient countries are looking for a piece of the cake that the most powerful markets mean; and the largest of the Antilles is also mounted on that rope, where competitiveness boils at high temperatures.
A destination can have many benefits to offer -even some as outstanding as political stability, citizen tranquility and epidemiological control of SARS-CoV 2-, but access to customer flows is needed, now depressed again by the conflict which since February 24 has been in the headlines of the world press.
The turn of leisure is recognized for its ability to drive other items, the growing generation of jobs, its dynamic foreign exchange earnings and also stands out for its ability to quickly “shake off” cyclical crises or unexpected phenomena.
With these guarantees count many to overcome the adversities of the present. Specifically for Cuban tourism, the context of 2022 adds a group of challenges that have set the bar high.
Always in the lead is the cruel imperial blockade tightened by Donald Trump and kept intact until now by Joe Biden; the unrestricted monitoring of the control of COVID-19 that still requires considerable resources to maintain the alert at borders and beyond throughout the national geography; the harsh conditions in which the domestic economy operates, and more recently the impossibility of counting on the Russian market, which has become one of the mainstays in the emission of travelers, even displacing Canada, the traditional number one.
The usual Russian tourists, who were regularly seen in Varadero, the northern keys and the capital, are no longer there because of the war dispute. In such a way then it is necessary -as indicated the previous week in the Balance of the Mintur- to work more on the remaining issuers and rescue the Latin American region, for whose market share there is a bid.
There is also the promotion of offers to nationals, a segment of which always opts, especially in summer, for the range of proposals.
For Cuba, as a place besieged by Washington and its allies around the world, everything is more complex.
There is no other option but to use innovation, creativity and strategies that oppose media aggression and harassment on social networks. The traveler must receive the image of a real Cuba and not a manipulated virtual version.
Extremely complicated, like its two predecessor years, this 2022 implies for the industry without chimneys -vital for the reactivation of the native economy- to exceed the dissimilar limitations before it to reach the goal of receiving two million 500 thousand visitors. Motivations are very strong as difficulties are difficult and challenging.
Dedication and time will finally tell how Cuban tourism will develop and advance in this context.
