MIAMI, United States. – The Minister of Economy and Planning of Cuba, Alejandro Gil, acknowledged this Friday that the Island Government will not meet its goal of receiving 2.5 million international visitors in 2022, as planned.
Gil assured that “it is estimated that the year will end with 1,710,000 tourists, a figure lower than the 2.5 million” projected in the Economy Plan and that it represents a 32% drop in the forecast figures.
The also deputy prime minister specified that “1,074,795 visitors had arrived in the country (so far in 2022).
According to the most recent report from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), the Island received 1,396,921 travelers in the first eight months of 2022, more than double the number who visited the country in the entire previous year. However, the figures remain far from the 3.5 million of 2019.
Of the total number of travellers, 971,456 were international visitors, which represents 807,732 (593.3%) more than in the period between January and August of the previous year.
In an analysis by country, 298,410 visitors arrived from Canada, from the United States (60,885), Spain (55,102) and from the Russian Federation, 38,488.
Another 212,485 travelers are Cuban immigrants living abroad.
In the middle of this year, the Minister of Tourism of Cuba, Juan Carlos García Granda, alluded to the sustained increase in tourist facilities on the island and said that the rate of growth of tourists arriving in the country has been higher than the rate of construction of rooms since the 90’s.
During a session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) reported by the official media Cubadebatethe official insisted on the regime’s plans to reach 2.5 million visitors by 2022.
Although the harsh crisis that the island is going through, the regime continues betting on raising the levels of the tourism industry. Recently, met that the Cubasol business group, of the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR), projected new investments to strengthen the non-hotel infrastructure of the Island until 2030, including the development of golf courses.
On the other hand, the Cuban regime has not paralyzed the construction of new hotels or the expansion of existing ones. In the months of global economic crisis caused by the pandemic and internal shortages caused by the handling of the economy by the Communist Party, the construction works of new hotels have not stopped, according to a report published in CubaNet at the beginning of June this year
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