Tourism officials in Cuba recently announced that the Spanish-speaking country has within the first five months of this year welcomed one million visitors to its shore, almost half of which it received during the first two months.

According to Cuba’s Minister of Tourism Juan Carlos Garcia Granda, the sharp growth in arrivals “represents an important step for the recovery of Cuban tourism”, with source countries such as Canada leading the market, accounting for more than 50 per cent of total arrivals.

The major source markets for the country are Canada, Germany, France, UK and Italy.

Speaking at a press conference following the official launch of the island’s flagship international tourism fair — FITCuba 2023 — Garcia Granda said that while the recovery of tourism activity in Cuba has been “difficult”, he is more optimistic about the sector’s growing contribution to the island’s battered economy.

Citing air connectivity among the greatest difficulties affecting the industry, the minister said despite the fact that some 51 commercial airlines currently travel to the country, in order to further grow arrivals there is the need for much more. For this reason, an important segment of FITCuba 2023, he said has been dedicated to airline companies in order to increase seating capacity when they cover different routes to Cuba.

“We have to focus on the arrival of new airlines in Cuba, since the arrival of cruise ships was affected after the unilateral measures adopted by the United States government during the Trump Administration. Before that decision, about 600,000 travellers arrived by sea in the country, many of which were Americans,” he said.

In 2022 Cuba welcomed approximately 1.7 million visitors, a significant improvement on the over 360,000 that arrived in 2021. However, in light of the growing stop-over arrivals, Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) has set an ambitious target to welcome 3.5 million visitors this year — a million more than the 2.5 million it projected in the previous year.

“We are not only looking at this year because tourism cannot lift the economy in a single year. It must be sustained work,” Garcia Granda said.

The Caribbean, which continues to lead the preferred destination for travels, is expecting to surpass its record pre-pandemic numbers as it aims to welcome near 33 million tourists this year, 10-15 per cent above those in 2019.

Boasting one of the quickest recovery rates globally, Caribbean destinations and their respective tourism ministries have been actively seeking to take advantage of remaining pent-up demand in top source markets such as the US supported by relaxed COVID-19 restrictions on travel in their own countries.

Since the start of this year a number of countries including Jamaica, Barbados, The Bahamas and others have been lining up to continue their tourism boom.

For the January to March period, one of the region’s top destination, Jamaica, is said to have welcomed near 1.2 million visitors, growth which its tourism minister Edmund Bartlett said was 94 per cent more than that of the same period last year.

“This represents earnings of US$1.15 billion, 46.4 per cent above the US$786.8 million earned for the same period in 2022,” Bartlett said, noting that in fiscal year 2023/24 the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is anticipated to be driven by continued robust performance in stopover arrivals, facilitated by increased room capacity and intensified marketing efforts.