For the past two years, the trend of visiting Cuba is on the higher side creating record number of tourist arrivals. Though many US airlines had reduced number of flights to Cuba, thanks to the growing number of cruises that helped the country to reestablish its momentum in tourism.
Last year, four million tourists entered Cuba out of which 112,000 traveled via cruise ships. From 1961, cruise routes from US were suspended which got reestablished last May. This reestablishment is expected to usher 370,000 cruise passengers to the Caribbean nation this year.
To quote Jose Luis Perello, Cuban economist and an expert of this industry, ‘’ In the next two or three years, I’m putting my money completely on the cruise ships because it’s the way the tourist can bring his own room, given the problem with the (local) scarcity of hotel rooms.’’
These cruise ships offer explanatory tourism to the travelers as majority of them don’t spend more than two days in Havana. Some of them also visit Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba and explore the surface of the country by avoiding inconveniences in many tourist facilities which are yet to get developed. US has highlighted many deficiencies of the island like lack of hotel rooms and shaky infrastructure.
