Destination Cuba at the Lisbon Travel Market

By Daily Pérez Guillén

Cuba will be the guest international destination at the Lisbon Travel Market (BTL 2025) to be held from March 12 to 16 in the Portuguese capital. Exhibitors from all over the world will present their novelties at the trade fair and visitors can participate in thematic workshops, presentations, gastronomic tastings and other initiatives associated with the leisure industry.

The Portuguese market presented positive trends to the destination of Cuba in 2023 by ranking among the main sources of tourists to the archipelago. “Its great potential became evident again in 2024 when it climbed to 11th place with the arrival of 33,724 visitors up to the close of December. It is the only European market to grow and surpass the record reached in 2019,” explained Niurka Pérez Denis, Cuban tourism counselor to Spain and Portugal.

Among the actions that have contributed to these results, the Cuban representative highlighted the first edition of the Cuba Destinations Tourist Market 2024 in Albufeira, Portugal, a professional tourism event with international scope that brought together different sector stakeholders from Portugal and Spain.

Niurka Pérez Denis, Cuban Tourism Counselor to Spain and Portugal.

“The precedent to this was the 14th Portugal/Latin America Forum sponsored by the Institute for the Promotion of Latin America and the Caribbean (IPDAL), held in Lisbon in 2023 and in which Cuba was the guest nation,” she recalled.

“This market continues to be strategic for the country and our intention is to continue strengthening it. At BTL 2025, we will seek to promote the increase of investment, encourage the export of services, continue strengthening the marketing of the destination, show its strengths and benefits, as well as the products and services offered to travelers who choose the island for their vacations and the possibility of closing new business deals,” Pérez Denis emphasized.

The Portuguese-Brazilian chain Hotéis Vila Galé started managing it’s first hotel in Cuba last year, in the Jardines del Rey tourist resort. The all-inclusive resort with 638 rooms, five bars, swimming pools for children and adults, spa, spaces for youngsters, halls for events and multi-sports courts on a plot of land delineated by a pristine beach in Cayo Paredón is the first business of the chain  in the Caribbean.

Hotel Vila Galé Cayo Paredón.

New direct air routes from Lisbon to Cuba through Iberojet and World2Fly airlines facilitated the arrival of Portuguese tourists to the main tourist resorts of the Caribbean archipelago in the last year.

The Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Cuba and its Portuguese counterpart established the basis for the development of institutional cooperation in April 2017 with the aim of increasing bilateral tourism flows.

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