• Submitted by: manso
• Travel and Tourism
• 05 / 04 / 2011

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Cuba has been able to overcome the global recession in tourism without resorting to price drops, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said in the keynote speech of the FITCuba tourism fair in Havana.

Amid the recession, the island logged in a 4-percent visitor growth in 2010. This high season, which just concluded, brought a record 10-percent rise in visitors. The tourism ministry has not published any revenue figures recently.

“In less than 10 years, Cuba turned into the third-largest tourist destination in the insular Caribbean,” Marrero said.

“This is despite not counting on the main source market, the United States.”

Despite the crisis, Cuba never “resorts to sacrificing prices as a solution to the ups and downs of the market,” he said.

In a reversal from 2009, when total tourism revenues dropped more than 10 percent — despite rising visitor numbers — revenues were up 3.9 percent during the first half of 2010. Arguing that the number of visitors to the island had continued to rise slightly during the crisis years of 2008 and 2009, Cuban officials last year urged tour operators in Canada and Mexico to maintain prices.

Even so, travel information Website Frommers reported last fall that Canadian tour operators were offering pre-season Cuba packages at prices that were “cheaper than ever.” “While weeklong air-and-land packages to some all-inclusive resorts in Cancun and elsewhere have risen to the $800s and $900s, similar vacations in Cuban resorts have plunged to the $500s and below,” Frommers wrote in October. Partly due to new construction, hotel occupancy plummeted to 51 percent at the end of the
first half of 2010, the last period for which official statistics are available. This was down from 55.6 percent in the same period of 2009.

One strength that could be promoted more is Cuba’s relative security, the minister said. There is no drug trafficking, crime rates are low, and there are no children begging in the streets, he said.

He also said his ministry is seeking to develop domestic tourism in luxury hotels.

Source: www.cubastandard.com/2011/05/03/cuba-survives-global-recession-without-t...