The tour operator Pegas Touristik and the airline Nordwind once again join forces to resume the flights between Moscow airports and Holguinin order to promote the arrival of Russian visitors to the so-called City of Parks.
With the start of these operations, scheduled for next October 29, there will be direct access from the capital of Russia to one of the most important tourist centers on the island, highlights a publication from the provincial newspaper Now!
Starting next October 29, a bridge will once again be “built” between Moscow and the City of Parks, when air operations will begin between the largest country in the world and #Holguinthrough the Pegas operator and the Nordwind line. https://t.co/VSMUS0uIw7
— Ahora.cu (@ahoracu) October 20, 2025
In this way, the operations started in 2017 by these same companies will be resumed under the modality of tourist packages, the publication adds.
After a pause, the route was reopened two years later, but this time with a Boeing 777 from the Royal Flight airline, bound for the Frank País international airport, run by the tour operator Coral Travel.
The media notes that this connection remained active until the first quarter of 2020, when almost all flights to the island were canceled due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The experience of Pegas is once again combined with the strength of Nordwind, which since 2008 has become one of the main operators in the Russian charter flight market, based at the Sheremetyevo airfield, in the Moscow city.
Pampering the Russian market
The new air operation from Moscow to Holguín territory comes as part of the Cuban Government’s efforts to recover the lost ground in the Caribbean tourism sector, of which it became a benchmark before the pandemic.
In this strategy, the potential represented by Russia is of great importance, which in recent years has consolidated itself among the three main sources of foreign visitors to the island.
The Cuban Government seeks to exceed the threshold of 200,000 visitors to the Slavic nation to sustain the increasingly difficult goal of ending this year with the arrival of 2.6 million tourists, a figure very far from the levels reached before the pandemic.
As part of this plan, different incentives have been promoted, such as the acceptance of Russian MIR bank cardswith more than 20 thousand payment terminals in hotels, stores and restaurants throughout the country.
Russian company Cosmos will manage a five-star hotel in Holguín
With a similar objective, the agreement was recently announced between the Cuban tourism group Gaviota and its Russian hotel partner Cosmos, for the latter to manage the Sierra Cristal Hotel, located precisely on the northern coast of Holguín.
The Cuban authorities in the sector also intend to explore the leasing of hotels to foreign chainswhich until now were only dedicated to the management of these facilities.
This is a paradigm shift in a sector that until now had been tightly controlled by the Cuban State through the Ministry of Tourism and different companies of the GAESA business consortium, in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).
delicate moment
Faced with the recovery experienced by other Caribbean destinations such as Cancún (Mexico) and Punta Cana (Dominican Republic), tourism in Cuba has not managed to recover its role as one of the main sources of foreign currency income for the battered economy of the island.
The sector is currently experiencing wear and tear as a result of the serious economic situation and the energy crisis, as well as the intensification of sanctions imposed on the island by the most recent US administrations.
Tourist arrivals remain in the doldrums, after a decline of more than 21% in August
So far this year, tourist arrivals have fallen compared to 2024, when the worst figure in the last 17 years was recorded.
According to the data According to the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei), between January and August 2025, a total of 1,259,972 international visitors arrived in Cuba, which represents 21.64% less than in the same period of the previous year.
Sector sources estimate that this year there will be around 1.8 million tourists, far from the 2.2 in 2024 and even more than the 4.7 million, the island’s historical maximum, reached in 2018.
