Cuba has long been a popular attraction for tourists from all over the world and particularly to American tourists who at some point constituted 80% of visitors from the early 20th century until 1959. Such tourism became Cuba's third largest source of foreign currency, behind the two dominant industries of sugar and tobacco. Tourism is again one of Cuba’s leading source of revenue.
The Great Depression of the 1930s, the end of prohibition, and World War II severely stifled Cuba's tourist industry, and it wasn't until the 1950s that numbers began to increase once again. During this period, the leisure and tourist industries were controlled by American organized crime, and Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas". After the triumph of the revolution, Castro ordered the closing of many bars and gambling halls, associated with prostitution and the drug trade, ending Cuba's image as a hedonistic getaway. Hotels, clubs, and beaches were made accessible to the Cuban population at affordable rates. But the fears of the unpredictable consequences of Cuba’s socialist revolution caused a rapid decrease in travel to the island.
In January 1961, relations between Cuba and the US deteriorated because of bank and business expropriations, mass exodus, and private property being declared illegal by a now openly communist regime backed by the USSR. Tourism travel to Cuba was soon outlawed by the U.S. State Department, and tourism that year dropped to 4.000 visitors. During the next three decades visitors to Cuba were few and the numbers increased gradually, but it wasn't until the early nineties that they would return to those seen before the revolution.
The Soviets were Cuba's chief trading partner providing substantial subsidies to Cuba's sugar industry. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a crisis in the economy and sent the country into a deep economic depression known in Cuba as the Special Period. The crisis drove the communist regime to find new avenues of income. Policies were drawn up to procure the growing tourist markets of Canada and Europe with an aim to replace Cuba's reliance on the sugar industry. During the nineties the number of available rooms to international tourists nearly tripled, and tourism surpassed sugar as Cuba's chief earner. Tourism was concentrated around Varadero, Cayo Coco, the beach areas north of Holguin, and Havana. Travelers from around the world visit Cuba, the largest numbers come from Canada, and Europe, and according to some statistics around 20,000 to 30,000 Americans travel illegally to Cuba every year.
Mass Tourism was introduced in the nineties to combat the scarcities of the post USSR period and with it came the seeds of capitalism and its idiosyncrasies. With the advent of mass tourism during the nineties the egalitarianism espoused by the revolution started to fade. Those having contact with the lucrative tourist industry suddenly found themselves with a substantially higher income than professional, industrial and agricultural workers.
Many independent travelers now adays chose to stay in Casas particulares; private residences in Cuba which have been licensed to allow paid lodging, these allow visitors to have a closer contact with the reality of Cubans. Until 1997 contacts between tourists and Cubans were outlawed by the Communist regime, and to ensure the segregation of international tourism from native Cubans, tourism was carried out in enclave resorts where tourists were segregated from Cuban society, this practice came to be known as "enclave tourism" and "tourism apartheid". The restriction of hotels only to foreign tourists was ended by the government of Raúl Castro in March 2008. |Access however remains very limited in practice, as most Cubans do not have the financial means that would allow them access.
© Daniel Botelho
