Cuba Posts Tourist Arrival Record High in January

Cuba’s travel industry finished strong in 2014 as the island nation cracked the 3-million-sunbather plateau for the first time. Now in 2015, the country is off to great start after reaching 371,160 visitors in the month of January, up 16 percent from the previous year.

According to local media sources, over 51,000 more tourists visited Cuba in January this year, with Canadian travelers leading the pack, followed by Germans, Britons, Frenchmen, Italians, Venezuelans, Argentineans, Mexicans, Spaniards and Russians in that order.

In the same breath, visitors from other markets also put good numbers on the board in the month of January, including Chile (+21.8 percent), Poland (+83 percent), Switzerland (+28.2 percent), China (+13.9 percent) and Austria (19.6 percent).  

Cruise travel has been one of the fastest-growing niches for the largest Caribbean island, with a staggering 76 percent increase in the number of calls and passengers only in the month of January.