Cuban tourism recovery delayed by war in Ukraine

(Viñales) On his horse, facing the colorful mountains of Viñales, Taliv Hasis, a Dutch pharmacist, realizes his dream: to visit Cuba. Tourists are starting to return, but the war in Ukraine is making it difficult to resume the island’s economic engine.

“On the list of things to do in life, there is: go to Cuba once,” says Taliv, 34, who “loves the nature and the people” of the country, where he came with his girlfriend.

Viñales, 180 kilometers west of Havana, is a picturesque village, famous for its “mogotes”, small ochre-colored mountains. Classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was full of tourists, mainly Europeans and Canadians, until March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the island.

Eighty percent of the village’s inhabitants were then left without work, while the country saw the number of foreign visitors drop from 4.3 million in 2019 to 356,000 in 2021.

The foreign currencies generated have shrunk from $2.2 billion in 2019 (the country’s second source of income, behind medical services abroad) to the equivalent of $559,000 in 2021.

The only lifeline found by the Cuban government during this period: Russian tourists, who suddenly flocked to the island, mainly in all-inclusive seaside hotels.

Cold shower

Russian tourism has thus increased by 197% between 2020 and 2021, surpassing all other nationalities of visitors to Cuba.

But the conflict in Ukraine has come to a halt: in early March, some 6,000 Russian tourists were urgently evacuated, while many countries had banned the overflight of their territory by Russian companies, which suspended the sale of tickets .

For Cuba, it’s a cold shower. Throughout the country, tourists are now rare.

“The change has been brutal […]now there are no more Russians and very few Europeans,” complains Denis Rosset, 38, in charge of fishing for customers for a restaurant in a square in Old Havana.

Same observation in the provinces: “The recovery is very slow and in reality Viñales is very far from the growth it knew before”, says, discouraged, Beatriz Sanchez, 22-year-old employee in a craft shop.

“It is sure that will go little by little”, also confides Tomasa Coello, 74, owner of one of the many houses renting rooms to tourists in the village.

She wants to be optimistic: “I think that tourists will continue to come to Cuba, because it is a very quiet country, it is important that they can feel at home”.

A decade to recover

The government also wants to believe it: this week it repeated its objective of receiving 2.5 million visitors in 2022.

Tourism expert José Luis Perello is more cautious. “The great uncertainty is that the war between Russia and Ukraine is not an isolated fact between two countries. This affects the entire European tourist market”.

And if “the increase in Russian tourists in Cuba was a temporary event”, to compensate for the absence of other nationalities during the pandemic, the core target of the island is not there.

Over the past 30 years, the majority of visitors have come mainly from Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and the United States.

According to the expert, global tourism has received “one of the strongest impacts since the Second World War” and will take a decade to recover.

In addition to global challenges, such as rising fuel prices which will make flights more expensive, the island is suffering from the strengthening of American sanctions.

Cruises from the United States can no longer dock in Cuba, food shortages are increasingly present and tour operators are sometimes hesitant before offering the destination to their customers, notes Perello.