Havana Cuba. – Bad news for the Government about tourism activity in the country They were the ones that surfaced during the 2022 balance assembly of that sector, and also at the most recent meeting of the Council of Ministers.
The plan for the past 2022 provided for the arrival to the Island of 2.5 million tourists, but only 1,014,000 visitors arrived in the country, for 64.6% of what was planned. That number barely represented 37.8% of what was achieved in 2019. And do not forget that the tourism authorities aspire, as part of the hypothetical recovery of the sector, to approximate the figures of that pre-pandemic year.
It has transcended an appreciable accumulation of deficiencies that, in general, are the causes of the debacle that the sector is going through. Poor quality of services, which has led to multiple complaints from tourists; low availability of fuel, with the consequent reduction in means of transport to guarantee non-hotel activities; not having the raw materials for the national production of goods for tourism; objective and subjective problems that have affected the investment plan; lack of lines of agriculture highly demanded by visitors; and the non-existence of an adequate night program in the hotels are several of the aforementioned deficiencies.
Taking into account this unfavorable panorama exhibited by the tourism sector, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz took advantage of the recent meeting of the Council of Ministers to harangue the managers of the sector. In that sense pointed: “You have to put aside the concept that this is how we have always done it. We are obliged to do different things, and review and establish a different work system and in tune with the times we live in”.
The senior Castro official was not very explicit in reference to the “different things” with which he intends to revive the tourism sector. In reality, we do not believe that the plump premier has a magic wand with which to float a sector that, at this moment, and as we say in good Cuban, “not even the Chinese doctor seems to save it.”
However, we could outline some ideas that came to light in the aforementioned government conclaves. Ideas that, almost certainly, will not solve the problems of tourism either. For example, there was talk of dedicating good land to produce exclusively for the food needs of tourists. The promoters of this idea should be reminded that the problem of insufficient agricultural production in Cuba does not lie, fundamentally, in the quality of the land, but rather in the lack of motivation of agricultural producers.
The issue of the tourism-culture relationship also occupied important spaces in the debates. The Castro authorities insist on the importance of offering tourists an authentically Cuban product, which rejects what they call “tacky activities.”
It is worth highlighting the meeting that the leadership held in recent days with some members of UNEAC, where the tourism-culture binomial was also discussed. Here the Minister of Tourism, in need of artistic support to raise the quality of the tourist product, had no choice but to apologize for the defaults that his ministry maintains with artists. The culture sector, for its part, had to respond for the high number of closed museums in the country, sites that generally arouse the interest of foreign visitors.
It was reported at the meeting of the Council of Ministers that at the end of February the plan for the arrival of visitors in the first two months of the current year was not fulfilled either. The reported number of tourists arriving in the country represented 90.6% of what was forecast.
If Mr. Marrero does not hurry to materialize his not very explicit “different things”, the decline in tourism will further aggravate the country’s economic situation. This is a sector that constitutes, together with remittances and medical services abroad, the triad that in recent times has contributed the highest income to the economy.
OPINION ARTICLE
The opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the person who issues them and do not necessarily represent the opinion of CubaNet.
