Spain was the main issuer of European tourists to Cuba until the end of July this year, with a figure that exceeds 40 thousand visitors, according to official media.
According to the agency Latin Press (PL)which cites the travel diary and sightseeing ExpressIn the first seven months of 2022, 42,057 Spaniards arrived in the largest of the Antilles.
Spain is the main European issuer of tourists to Cuba https://t.co/9RA0XCT0Ls pic.twitter.com/z7AewAtkfC
— Expreso, travel and tourism journal (@expreso_info) August 29, 2022
According to data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI) of Cuba, managed by the specialized media, the growth of Spanish tourism on the Island this year is 900% compared to the same period in 2021, when just over 4,000 vacationers from that European nation were counted.
In the aforementioned period, Cuba received 1,200,580 million travelers, of which 834,891 were international visitors (693,592 more than in the same period of the previous year). By countries of origin, the main issuers were Canada, the United States and Spain, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Mexico, in that order, the publication notes.
Cuba received more than 800 thousand international visitors between January and July
highlights PL that in the case of Spain the registered increase is related to the significant increase in flights that cover the route between Madrid and Havana.
Although the arrival of visitors to Cuba continues to grow, the numbers are still far from the more than 2 million that arrived in the first six months of 2019, before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19.
At the beginning of this year, and taking into account the control of the disease through vaccination with its own drugs, the authorities of the Ministry of Tourism they set as an annual objective the reception of 2.5 million tourists, a goal that they maintain publicly even when there are only four months left until the end of 2022.
According to official calculations, the Cuban economy would receive 1,159 million dollars if it manages to reach that number of visitors, which would help alleviate the severe economic crisis in the countrydeepened by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, US sanctions, and internal difficulties and inefficiencies.
According to official estimates, tourism represents the second largest item of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country, and at the same time it is the second largest source of foreign exchange in the battered economy of the Island.
