Toward an understanding of the tourism potential in Cuba.(CQ CASES)

The author argues that the U.S.-led boycott of and travel ban to Cuba has been abandoned by most other nations, to the detriment of U.S. interests. Rather than continue the boycott, opening tourist channels could well pave the way to rapprochement between the two estranged governments.

Keywords: Cuba tourism; U.S. foreign policy

Tourism in Cuba is often described as being the locomotive engine that pulls the rest of the economy behind it. When the Soviet Union imploded in 1990, the Cuban government looked around for resources that could be exploited to avoid economic collapse and found tourism. Today the importance of tourism to Cuba's economy is being challenged by the sale of medical goods and services, but tourism remains a premier influence in showing Cubans a different approach to development.

The growth figures are dramatic indeed. The island had only twelve thousand hotel rooms in 1990, but that figure had grown to forty-two thousand in 2007, an annual growth rate of 8 percent, and the number of visitors grew 13 percent during that period. An estimated 80 percent of all construction on the island in the past year was sparked by tourism, and ten international airports have been built or refurbished to handle the demand. Last year some 2.4 million tourists visited the island, of whom six hundred thousand were from Canada, and 2007 will be the fourth year in a row that more than 2 million tourists have visited Cuba (which numbers 11.2 million in population).

Tourism clearly has been good for Cuba. In total some three hundred thousand Cubans work directly or indirectly in the tourist trade, which grossed some US$2.4 billion in 2006. Plans announced by the minister of tourism indicate that thirty new hotels (comprising ten thousand rooms) are to be built, along with ten golf courses. Tourism has also been good for the joint venture partners. In this regard, Cuba does not allow direct foreign investment in any industry, and investors are paired with a Cuban counterpart. Companies such as Spain's Sol Melifi chain (the principal investor in the industry), Accor of France, and Super Clubs of Jamaica have done well in Cuba.

Excluded from this large potential market are U.S. hoteliers and tourism operators, banned by U.S. law both from traveling to Cuba or doing business there. Despite the travel ban, I see great interest among Americans to go to Cuba. In April 2007, for instance, evidence was given by a spokesperson for the American Association of Travel Agents to the U.S. International Trade Commission that approximately 1.8 million Americans would be expected to travel to Cuba if travel restrictions were lifted by Washington, although it is unlikely that the ban would be lifted by the current administration.

Tourism is crucially important to foster international understanding. Such an effort apparently has not been a goal in Washington since January 1961, when the Eisenhower administration broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. In total, ten U.S. presidents have vowed to bring about regime change in Cuba, but forty-eight years have elapsed since Fidel Castro came to power. Indeed, the goal of isolating Cuba that Washington undertook seems to have backfired. In November 2006, some 183 countries at the United Nations voted to condemn the U.S. embargo of the island, while just 3 others (Israel, Palau, and the Marshall Islands) joined in supporting the United States's position. This is the fifteenth year in a row that Washington has been embarrassed in this vote. The only country isolated in this regard is the United States itself.

It is crucially important for the United States government to realize that the twenty-first century is a wholly different time from the cold war days. Tourism can help to prepare the way for the eventuality of restored relations with Cuba.

Before this can happen, however, it is important for America to understand the aspirations of revolutionary Cuba. A balanced understanding of the reality of Cuba, as well as its history, would be a good place to start. For example, Americans are only too well aware of acts of terrorism of September 11, 2001, but they are ignorant of the deaths of thousands of Cubans resulting from terrorism committed by right-wing exile groups based in the United States, or the many assassination attempts on Castro by the CIA. (If anybody has any doubts about this, they should Google "Luis Posada Carriles" or look at the National Security Archive website at George Washington University.) Nor do they appreciate that the cost of the U.S. embargo has been an estimated $89 billion for this small island. Unfortunately, over the years Cuban American groups have hijacked the Cuba file, turning their personal frustration into a badly flawed national policy.

I see the panorama brightening, at least somewhat. After all, if America can trade with Vietnam (where nearly sixty thousand U.S. citizens were killed) or China (with its horrendous human rights record), why can the country not do so with Cuba? Why should the citizens of New Orleans have been deprived of medical support (as occurred when the Bush administration rejected the Cuban offer of some eleven hundred doctors and thirty-six tons of medicine in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc there)? Surely it is time to turn the pages of history and inject some common sense.

The United States has reopened some trade with Cuba. In 2000 Congress passed a bill to allow the sale of humanitarian and food supplies to Cuba, and Havana has been a regular purchaser of U.S. agricultural products ever since, spending $1.6 billion since 2001. Some 66 percent of wheat imported by Cuba and some 77 percent of poultry come from U.S. companies--in all, about 30 percent of Cuba's food imports in the past year. Even the official Communist Party newspaper is printed on Alabama newsprint! Moreover, if the current restrictions (requiring that all shipments be paid in advance in cash) were made more flexible, the International Trade Commission believes that U.S. exports to Cuba would double.

In addition, some eighty U.S. citizens (mainly from visible minorities) study medicine--at no charge--in Cuba, eight of whom graduated in the summer of 2007. For eighteen years the Pastors for Peace organization has been taking humanitarian assistance to Cuba. Dozens of state delegations headed by a variety of governors, celebrities, and business groups have traveled to Cuba in recent years, seeing for themselves the potential for increased trade, investment, and travel once bilateral relations are normalized by the federal government.

The point of this analysis is that isolationism has not worked in overthrowing the Castro government. The United States is now the sixth largest trading partner of Cuba, despite the "Trading with the Enemy Act," and tourists from all over the world (except from the United States) travel to Cuba. Speaking in the U.S. Senate on June 21, 2007, Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) summed up well the need for a change in policy, saying,

It is indeed time to attempt to bring about what five decades of bluster and antagonism have not done--communication between two disparate governments and political systems. Interim President Raul Castro has mentioned in three public speeches since December 2006 the interest of the Cuban government in negotiating a peaceful end to this distressing situation, but only if there is respect for Cuba's sovereignty. Dialogue and reconciliation would appear desirable goals in the Middle East, so why not apply the same objectives to a small island just ninety miles from Florida? Tourism is an invaluable step in this process, as the authors of "Cuba at the Crossroads" indicate. Americans traveling in Cuba are respected (even as many are doing so illegally, flouting the prohibition), and treated like any visitors to the island. Why can this not be extended to the U.S. population as a whole? In the Cuban case, promoting the rights of U.S. tourists to visit the island is an idea whose time has come.

John M. Kirk, Ph.D., the author or coeditor of ten books on Cuba, is a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (john.kirk@dal.ca). Since 1993 he has worked as a consultant for a variety of Canadian and European companies with investments in and trade to Cuba, as well as with several NGOs.

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