Hoping to achieve the goals planned for 2025 and to have the conditions to do so, Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda kicked off the new year with the promotion of Cuba as a destination at the International Tourism Fair in Madrid (FITUR 2025).
“We were able to confirm that the sales network is still interested in promoting Cuba, that all our partners are still hopeful that the difficult moments experienced at the end of the year, such as the hurricanes and the disruption of the electricity supply, are really just a temporary problem,” the minister stated.
In meetings with representatives of the airlines operating in the archipelago, MINTUR representatives clarified their concerns and signed co-marketing agreements. “We can say that we have the commitment that in 2025 the main airlines will maintain the same flight frequencies as in 2024. We would have liked to have left with a higher number, an increase, but everything depends on stabilizing the quality of service in Cuba,” García Granda clarified.
In his opinion, in recent months the response to such circumstances has been positive. “Clients return with much greater satisfaction, even talking much more positively about the quality of the hotel facilities ”
Through the use of Artificial Intelligence, one of the companies with which MINTUR works has corroborated that, “Despite the problems, in relation to the previous year, we are growing in positive comments on social networks.”
As for the European market, with lower tourist numbers to Cuba, among other factors due to the measure taken five years ago that makes it difficult for citizens of that region to visit the United States taking advantage of the ESTA or electronic visa if they have visited Cuba, the minister emphasized that, “Our tour operators, for the volumes we have planned, do not consider that this is still an obstacle for the time being. We must continue to focus on stabilizing the competitiveness of the Cuban destination.”
During the exchange with the press, the minister referred to Cuba’s potential, among which he listed its cultural wealth and heritage.
“We also have the circuits and the combined tours, traveling from a long distance to visit a single place is quite complicated, they are longer journey times and really in that modality we have a tradition and a positioning. That’s why we benefit a lot from the routes we have consolidated, such as the rum route, the Havana cigar route, the route of the heritage cities. Lately we have also been working on something that can bring many benefits to part of the Cuban population: rural tourism and local tourism. All of that already accompanied by the word sustainability.”
The commitment to accessibility is another of the areas valued by the agencies that work with this type of tourism and which has received international recognition.
“But the big difference is safety,” the minister stressed. “It involves a group of factors ranging from free mobility to guarantees of health indicators. We have all the protection systems certified. And the people, who have become part of the attributes that today other destinations also seek to highlight,” he specified. (https://www.traveltradecaribbean.es/en/positive-results-for-cuba-at-fitur-2025/)
