Caribbean urged to piggyback on Cuba's re-entry as tourism force
By Miranda La Rose
Stabroek News
May 29, 2002
As Cuba prepares to reassert itself as a major player in the region's travel and hospitality industry, there are concerns that this will pose a threat to the sector in the Eastern Caribbean.
These concerns came to the fore in a live talkback session during lunch on the final day of the Caribbean Media Exchange (CMEx) held at the Sandals Royal Bahamian in Nassau, Bahamas last weekend. Moderator of the session, Communications Director of the Almond Beach Resort in Barbados, Doug Hoyte, said that by the end of this year Cuba will have over 40,000 hotel rooms.
Cuba's plan to build some 50,000 new hotel rooms in the medium term was described by one CMEx participant as "one of the biggest threats to tourism in the Caribbean," a threat, he saw as "being bigger than terrorism and hurricane."
However, Hoyte sought to allay this fear with the view that Cuba's re-entry should be seen as a win/win situation with the opportunities created by Cuba benefiting the entire Caribbean through multi-destination marketing.
The American Travel Society, he said estimated that if the US embargo on Cuba was lifted, the number of American visitors to the island in one year will reach five million in the next five years. He said that there was also a school of thought in the Caribbean, which suggested that the Bahamas, with its heavy reliance on American visitors will be the most affected.
Hoyte noted a World Tourism Organisation report of sustained growth in the tourism industry in the Caribbean, but "the simple truth," he said, was that this growth was occurring in mainly the Spanish-speaking western Caribbean region, including Cancun in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
He recalled that less than 30 years ago Cancun was a sleepy little fishing village; the Dominican Republic was mired in political bankruptcy and Cuba was quietly planning a comeback in tourism. "We have witnessed the successes in Cancun and the Dominican Republic and even without the linkages of the American and North American market, Cuba has done one hell of a job getting back in tourism," he added.
Pre-supposing that the decades-old embargo on trade the US has imposed on Cuba was lifted, Hoyte said that either way, the Caribbean should be ready to embrace Cuba's effort to reassert its dominance as a powerful hospitality player in the region.
The Cuban government, he noted, has launched a major campaign to boost its product overseas and was preparing its nationals for the anticipated resurgence of visitors. There are programmes on televisions and in schools to teach English and Mathematics to Cubans seeking positions in the tourism industry. It was noted that the Cuban participant in the media exchange, who is also a part of the system delivering promotional materials exclusively outside Cuba, was fluent in French, Russian and English apart from her native Spanish.
Instead of being apprehensive in viewing Cuba as a threat, Hoyte suggested that the rest of the Caribbean should view Cuba as a partner and learn from that country's commitment to the industry.
From a historical perspective, he recalled that even before the seventies when tourism started to evolve in the eastern Caribbean and prior to 1959 Cuba was a playground for America's rich and famous. The advent of the Cuban revolution brought an abrupt end to the influx of external visitors to the island. Fidel Castro's government's targeting of the locals as a way of maintaining the industry did not work for very long. Twenty-five years later, Cuba gradually began getting back into international tourism and today it is already attracting Canadians, British, Italians, Spaniards, Germans and Latin Americans in substantial numbers. In spite of the embargo, American visitors make their way to Cuba via the Bahamas and Jamaica.
Last year alone there were 1.8 million visitors to Cuba and the number is projected to pass the two million mark this year. The northern coast, considered the Cuban Rivera has over 13,000 rooms alone accounting for 34% of the Cuban room inventory. The foreign team that owns the exclusive resort, Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, runs 22 hotels in Cuba.
Connecting Cuba to the rest of the Caribbean, Hoyte said, has already begun. He added that there was the opportunity for promoting more multi-destination vacations, super-clubs and beaches which already have a presence in Cuba. He noted that Sandals Resort will open its doors in Cuba in September.
Air Jamaica, too, he noted has been flying to Cuba for the past five years and recently with the pull out of British Airways from Cuba, it has begun to fly the London route via Havana from Kingston.
Throughout the conference, there were suggestions from several speakers that the region should look towards owning or having shares in a regional carrier instead of each country seeking to have its own airline. This suggestion was made in different sessions by past chairman of the Bahamas Broadcasting Corporation, Sir Arthur Folkes; Bahamas' Director General of Tourism, Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace; Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Sales of Air Jamaica and Chairman of the Caribbean Hotel's Association's Market-ing Committee, Allen Castanet; and Travel Editor of NBC, Peter Greenberg.
Other subjects covered included tourism and its economic impact; communications and tourism; the economics of going green; the value of advertising; sustainable development and the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on the tourism sector; reporting for better health, embracing black tourism; and change is the only constant.
The Caribbean Media Exchange, which attracted some 40 media workers and other key players in the tourism sector from the region as well as stakeholders in the travel and hospitality industry from North America and Europe, included a three-day visit to the `environmentally-managed' Half Moon Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The organisers included the Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (CAST), the Caribbean Hospitality Association (CTA), the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU), Counterpart International and Earth Voice. They were supported by a number of leading regional and international businesses as well as the Barbados and Bahamas ministries of tourism and tourism authorities.