Expectations on Cuba’s tourism fair grow

Cuba's natural potentialities, along with the efforts by authorities and specialists to recover the leisure industry, are raising expectations about the 40th International Tourism Fair, FITCuba 2022.

The event will take place from May 3 to 7 at the Plaza America fairgrounds in Varadero, Cuba’s major coastal resort, some 140 kilometers east of Havana.

Those expectations are justified by an increase in Cuba’s recreational activity since November 15, when its borders opened to travels, as health security protocols implemented amid the Covid-19 pandemic were eased.

According to the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI), Cuba received 573,944 foreign tourists in 2021.

That figure accounts for 39.8 percent of those who arrived in the country in 2020 and it is equivalent to 869,181 fewer visitors, although Cuba showed a slight recovery in the sector since mid-November.

Hotels construction and remodeling programs are currently underway to increase more than 71,000 rooms in some 300 hotels distributed nationwide, especially in four and five-star establishments.

Russia and Canada have crowned themselves in these times of health difficulties as Cuba’s major tourist-sending markets, especially to Varadero and the northern keys in Cuba’s central region.

Cuba plans to receive 2.5 million foreign visitors this year, considering that before the pandemic, it received more than four million tourists per year.