Cuba’s tourism keeps chugging along against all odds

Amid the tough situation the tourist industry went through worldwide in 2002, Cuba has not halted the development program for its number-one economic sector right now, said Carlos Lage Davila, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Cuban Council of Ministers.

A clear-cut case in point was the Jan. 21 grand opening of the 944-room Playa Pesquero Hotel, run by Gaviota Group, a resort huge enough to accommodate up to 10,000 guests and rank as the biggest on the island nation and one of the largest in the entire Caribbean.

Cuba added 2,700 hotel rooms in 2002 –both newly built or refurbished. Dozens of extra-hotel facilities and services got started up as well and the Jardines del Rey International Airport on Cayo Coco became fully operational, the Cuban Vice Minister said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the newfangled air terminal.

Mr. Lage pointed out that the country now has a stockpile of 40,000 rooms for international tourists, 11 international airports and the leisure industry has a payroll of 100,000 workers who are increasingly better trained and more skilled.

Today, Cuba is linked to 318 tour operators and travel agencies, and to 16 foreign companies running hotels on the island nation. In the same breath, 61 international airlines fly to Cuba and a grand total of 33 joint ventures have been set up with “12 of them operating as we speak,” Mr. Lage added.

During his ceremonial speech, Mr. Lage labeled the opening of the Cayo Coco International Airport as the onset of a new stage for Jardines del Rey tourist circuit that –he said- will no doubt pan out to be a highly coveted and well-known location worldwide.

In this respect, Rogelio Acevedo, president of Cuba’s Civil Aviation Institute (IACC), explained the new airport offers an array of advantages for tourism in Ciego de Avila since it was built just 6 miles from the Cayo Coco hotels and barely 18 miles from the resorts on Cayo Guillermo.

Tourists can save up to $10 apiece when moving in and out of the location, Mr. Acevedo went on to say. The spanking-new Cayo Coco Airport could be running under a first stage of operations until the tourist region reaches 9,000 hotel rooms, threefold its current number of accommodations.

The Jardines del Rey International Airport, built with a fund of $82.9 million, features a 3,000-meter-long, 45-meter-wide runway, a 36-meter-high control tower equipped with cutting-edge technology and a terminal outfitted to assimilate 600 passengers an hour during the busiest flight schedules. In all, the airport can cater to 1.2 million passengers every year.

Shortly after the grand opening of the new airport, El Baga Nature Park swung its gateways wide open as the first of its kind in the country. The new park was pieced together on the basis of several international experiences.

Bankrolled by the IACC, the project allowed the restoration of lands formerly used by the old Cayo Coco airfield, thus boosting the value of the extra-hotel services along Ciego de Avila’s northern keys.

Nature and identity are El Baga’s slogan, a park that embraces 769 hectares of woods areas, mangrove thickets, lagoons, narrow channels of water, beaches and sand dunes where barely 0.26 hectares of land were transformed to set up tourist attractions.