Cuba to Build 108,000 New Guestrooms by 2030

Cuba plans to build some 108,000 new rooms by 2030 to accommodate tourists, as part of the National Plan for Economic and Social Development, according to delegates gathered for Cuban Communist Party’s 7th Congress, which ends Tuesday, news agency EFE reported.

The plans were unveiled by Manual Marrero, the island’s minister of tourism, who announced that potential locations have already been identified for the future facilities. According to reports from government-sanctioned Cuban media outlets, the new construction projects also will include “other non-hotel activities such as marinas and golf courses.”

Marrero said an investment program would be launched alongside the planned construction.

“We cannot make the mistake other countries have made that, with new development, old hotels are cast aside,” Marrero was quoted as saying in Granma, the Communist Party daily. “Tourism has a multiplier effect and the sector has the capacity to promote development of other areas of the economy to create productive linkages.”

He added that for Cuba, tourism serves as a “strategic sector that eventually would become a locomotive of the national economy.”

The planned new tourist accommodations are part of an economic opening endorsed by Cuban leader Raúl Castro, EFE reported.

Since 2011, the nation has opened more than 10,900 new hotel rooms and rebuilt another 7,000. Additionally, more than 14,000 rooms are now available for rent in private homes, a sector experiencing rapid growth due to high demand.

The number of tourists visiting the island is at an all-time high, with 3.5 million visitors in 2015, a “boom” that coincides with the thaw in relations between Washington and Havana and an easing of U.S. restrictions on travel by Americans to the island.

Source: The Bradenton Herald