Cuba bets on the recovery of tourism even in difficult conditions

by: Daily Pérez Guillén

Cuba reaches the first million foreign visitors at the beginning of this month of May. The Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, declared this in an exchange with the press at FitCuba 2023.
“It has been difficult to recover tourism, but we do not lose hope that we will reach the figures we had before the pandemic,” said the headline. “Canada is our main market, it has recovered to 80% of the year 2019 and means more than 50% of tourism, but we cannot say the same about another important market such as European countries.”

The economic crisis, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the increase in the cost of fuel, insufficient air connectivity, as well as the impact of the United States blockade policies against Cuba, are some of the factors that affect this behavior.
However, according to García Granda, the Ministry of Tourism draws up professional strategies together with Tour operators of the Latin American continent to recover the area, especially the Brazilian, Argentine, Bolivian and Colombian markets.
“The recovery has been difficult but we do not lose hope that we will reach the figures of before the pandemic,” he pointed out.

As part of this plan to attract travelers, the Cuban Ministry of Tourism has begun to promote the destinations of the archipelago using bigdata in collaboration with the Passporter agency. Its director, Diego Rodríguez, presented at #FITCuba2023 how all the points of interest in the national territory have been digitized. Potential travelers are also studied to attract them more precisely to the national territory.

The digital strategy has integrated a planner to Cuba Travel. Likewise, influencers, content designs for the press, the articulation of campaigns in five markets and different platforms, as well as the publication of more than 95 blogs with qualified content on Cuba, are used to position the destination on Internet search engines.

So far, 82.4 million impressions associated with this strategy have been recorded, a presence in 6 markets and a reach of 1.3 million digital readers.

“We are trying to show, in addition to the strength that we have as a sun and beach destination, the cultural diversity, because of its international recognition, and the music that is recognized by all our clients,” said the Minister of Tourism.