Cuban tourists in Varadero

From the Global Post website, here’s an interesting report from Nick Miroff about Cubans staying in Varadero hotels.

According to Miroff, for less than $200, Cubans are buying packages that get them a week in an all-inclusive hotel on the peninsula and includes bus transportation to and from Havana. “Many of Varadero’s upper-end facilities are still full of foreigners, but the more affordable resorts have been jammed with Cubans all summer,” he reports.

Raul Castro’s April 2008 action that ended the prohibition on Cubans staying in hotels in their own country was positive from a human rights perspective, and it also makes good economic sense for the government.

Like the action on cell phones, it soaks up some of the hard currency purchasing power that some Cubans enjoy, whether through their jobs, their enterprises, or gifts from relatives. (When the Obama Administration gets around to implementing its April 13 decision to allow unlimited remittances, there will be a lot more.)

$200 per head per week must be very close to the break-even point, but even if these travelers provide little or no profit, there’s a benefit for the tourism industry. July and August are an extremely low season for tourism in Cuba, coinciding with vacation time for lots of Cubans. If Cubans fill some hotels in July and August, they maintain the hotels’ cash flow, keep the staff working, and prevent the closing of hotels that we have seen during some summer seasons.

[Photo from merlin-world.com.]