March 7, 2023

Tourism in Cuba continues to recover only slowly. According to the latest figures released yesterday by Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism, the island has seen 489,000 visitors so far this year, which is around half the number of guests compared to the same period in 2019. While tourism from Canada is already 90 percent back to the pre-corona level, arrivals from Europe in particular are still lagging behind.

The top three sources of visitors to Cuba are currently Canadians, Americans on family visits and people-to-people tours, and Cubans living abroad. 20,589 visitors came from Russia this year. The traditionally strong Western European markets only follow followingwards. There, the British ranked first with 13,596 visitors, followed by Germany with 13,585 guests, France (13,103) and Italy (11,373).

As one of the reasons for the weakening number of visitors from Europe, the ministry identified the insufficient number of flight connections with Europe, which are still below the values ​​of 2019. In addition, the difficult supply and energy situation is standing in the way of tourism recovery. The increased cost of living in the emission countries themselves and the generally poor global economy are also likely to have contributed to the result. However, neighboring Caribbean countries such as the Dominican Republic were able to achieve old visitor records once more last year, with around 8.5 million travelers reported there in 2022.

In January, the island received 249,255 international visitors. That slipped to around 240,000 in February, a month of the traditional high season. Along with the export of medical services and remittances from abroad, tourism is one of the country’s three most important sources of foreign exchange.