MIAMI, United States. – The Cubatur travel agency (state-owned) has begun to promote the Island as a destination for international weddings and 15th birthday parties, following the celebration of the Wedding Expo 2024, which will take place for the first time in the largest of the Antilles on November 15 and 16.
The event, which will be held at the Free Havana Hotelhas been presented as an opportunity to position Cuba in the global market for wedding ceremonies, with the intention of capturing the attention of tour operators, travel agencies and potential clients from various parts of the world, according to a report from the middle Travel Trade Caribbean.
According to that source, in a press conference held this Thursday, the organizers of Expo Bodas 2024 highlighted the participation of 37 exhibitors, including hotel chains, travel agencies and services. cateringseeking to showcase their offerings.
In addition to establishing itself as a showcase for services, the event joins the Cuban government’s strategy to mitigate the economic crisis that the country is going through, offering wedding tourism as an alternative source of income amid the shortages and restrictions that citizens face.
During the press conference, Juan Carlos Govea, Cubatur’s main specialist in Market, Events and Incentives, stressed that the Wedding Expo aims to showcase Cuba as an “elegant and unique” destination for weddings.
The commitment to the international wedding market, as well as the focus on countries such as CanadaGermany, France, Mexico and Brazil, which according to Govea show a “growing demand” to celebrate weddings in Cuba, reflects a disconnect between the needs of the population and the priorities of the regime, which once again invests in promoting events for foreigners instead of addressing the internal problems that plague the nation.
According to available information, Expo Bodas is expected to be held annually, with the next edition scheduled for September 2025.
Cuba received a total of 1,680,485 visitors during the first half of 2024, according to official figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI). Although this number represents an increase of 101.1% compared to the previous year, it barely reflects an increase of 0.9% compared to the same period in 2023. The figure shows that the Cuban tourism sector is still far from achieving the regime’s goal of attracting 3.2 million tourists in 2024.
Last JuneCuban authorities had announced the arrival of 1.8 million tourists in the first six months of 2024. However, economist Pedro Monreal refuted this figurearguing that to reach that number, 625,112 visitors would have had to have arrived in June, something that was highly unlikely given that the maximum number of visitors in a June in recent years was 342,195 in 2018.
