Tourism down, from U.S. and overall

Contrary to some media reports that I cited, tourism is down seven percent in the first four months of 2018, according to the tourism ministry cited by ACN. Cuban officials still hope to reach 5 million visits this year, after 4.7 million last year. The four million mark was hit in 2016, and the three million mark just two years earlier. U.S. visits dropped 56 percent due to the new Trump Administration rules and the travel warning (Reuters). U.S. cruise ship visits appear to be substantial; this article says that 74 percent of U.S. visitors arrive by air. Finally, more hotel news: a hotel of “approximately 42 floors” will be built at 25^th and K in Vedado (Cubadebate), apparently where there is now a large depression across from the Methodist church.

Odds and ends

·      What were the main changes during Raul Castro’s presidency? Granma and 14yMedio sum it up and are not very far apart.

·      Profiles of President Diaz Canel, by the New York Times and AP.

·      Faced with the same issues our embassy in Havana faced, Canada’s foreign ministry decides to keep its diplomatic staff in place and withdraw spouses and children. Also in Canada’s statement: “There is no evidence to suggest that Canadian travelers to Cuba are at risk.”

·      In Politico, a nonfiction bodice-ripper from Peter Kornbluh of all people, set in the Kennedy/Johnson years.

·      Granma reports on the Hotel Paseo del Prado, being built at Prado and Malecon, due to open next year. It is being built on a lot that was cleared years ago, at one time awaiting a China-financed hotel that never panned out. Across Prado and a block uphill, there’s the soon-to-open Hotel Packard, a large project that incorporates an old façade that was propped up by scaffolding for about 20 years. Spain’s Iberostar will manage it. From Skift in 2016, here’s a survey of hotel development in Cuba. Hotel construction is proceeding in Trinidad too; on a recent visit I saw two long-stalled projects under way, one a few blocks from the Plaza Mayor, and another way up the hill behind the church on the Plaza Mayor; this one is incorporating the ruins of a very old church that has just a few walls remaining.

·      There's a drop in U.S. travelers that is making many place in Cuba feel like 15 years ago (all Europeans and Asians, no Americans), and overall visits are down seven percent so far over 2017 (ACN). (Preceding sentence is corrected; some media reports noted growth rather than the seven percent decline.) And while some U.S. airlines have dropped out, those who continue to operate Cuba routes continue going to the Department of Transportation to bid for available routes (Forbes).

·      These scientists demonstrated that two ultrasound emissions on conflicting frequencies can cause a screeching sound – but this doesn’t explain any possible injury. Apparently, ultrasound can be used both in listening devices and in devices to interfere with them. Radio interview here.

·      This Kenyan medical school professor wants Cuba’s help not just with doctors, but in organizing the country’s public health system.

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Odds and ends

• Reuters: Robertico Carcasses, son of jazz musician Bobby Carcasses, drew flak from the Cuban government when during a concert he called for free access to information and direct popular election of the Cuban President.  Singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez came to his defense and it appears that Robertico may be getting out of hot water.  Carcasses is also in favor of ending the U.S. embargo and releasing the four remaining members of the “Cuban Five.”

• In CubaEncuentro, General Rafael del Pino, the highest-ranking Cuban military defector, calls on Cuban Americans in Congress to do the right thing and pull the plug on TV Marti.

• IPS reports on cost-consciousness coming to the Cuban health care system, which has cut its workforce by one sixth (nearly 100,000 personnel) and nearly doubled the number of family doctor offices in the past four years.

• Conservative columnist George F. Will chides the CIA for resisting releasing the final volume of its own history of the Bay of Pigs debacle, arguing that it would be good for the country and for the U.S. government to ponder its lessons.  Good for the National Security Archive for fighting in court to get it released.

• Herald: Florida Governor Rick Scott, who shamelessly played to both sides regarding the Florida law that bans state government and Florida local governments from doing business with companies that do business with Cuba, has given up the fight.  Setting aside Miami’s foreign policy prerogatives, federal courts have deemed the law unconstitutional.

• EFE: Cuban tour operators will begin selling the services of private restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts, Tourism Ministry official Jose Manuel Bisbe announced.

Tourism, growing and changing

AP reports that Cuba’s tourism sector performed well in 2011, with visits up seven percent and revenues up 12.8 percent over 2010. 

Part of the story has to do with Cuban tourism, following the 2008 end to the prohibition on Cubans staying in hotels in their own country.  Xinhua reports on how Sol Melia is marketing its hotels to the Cuban public, noting that there were 1.3 million hotel stays (sounds high, doesn’t it?) by Cubans (including Cuban Americans) in Cuban hotels last year. 

The promotion has been going on for some time; see this Granma piece from 2010.  And an item on Cubans in Varadero hotels here.

Odds and ends

·         A Florida foreign policy update, a little late: The state law that bars companies that do business in Cuba from bidding on state and local government contracts was blocked by a federal court, and the state law that bars the use of state university funds for academic travel to Cuba was allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court.

·         FT’s John Paul Rathbone on a 1959 Errol Flynn documentary, Cuban Story, recently rediscovered and released in Britain.

·         New York Times: A derrumbe in Brooklyn.

·         The New York Times on rock climbing in Vinales.

Tourism and the private sector

In an article on tourism in Cuba (2.7 million visitors last year, and this year’s figures are up 5.2 percent through March), Juventud Rebelde notes the contribution of the entrepreneurial sector: there are 1,618 private restaurants and 5,207 homes in which Cubans rent rooms to foreign visitors.

Speaking of those homes, the Herald’s Mimi Whitefield has a colorful report on the families who are learning the home-based hospitality business.

Odds and ends

• A Thursday night fire that wiped out the offices of Airline Brokers, Inc. in Coral Gables was a “deliberate” action, officials told the Herald.  Granma tied it to the anniversary of the death of Orlando Bosch.

• AFP: The Brookings Institute brings a delegation to Cuba that included, in a sign of the changing times, Alfonso Fanjul.

• AP: Cuban diplomats in Havana talk with Cuban émigrés in the Cuban mission in Washington via videoconference, and migration reform is the top issue.

• Europa Press: Cuban tourism continues to grow, up five percent in the first quarter.

Odds and ends

Lots of catching up to do:

· Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, talks to the Peoria Journal-Star about his trip to Cuba.

· The Herald has a story about the sentencia in the Alan Gross case. The document states that Gross used Americans who were traveling to Cuba on Jewish fellowship trips to carry parts of his satellite equipment, without telling them that his project was a U.S. government initiative.

· Reuters: Europeans opting for Cuba over North Africa are one factor driving Cuba’s tourism numbers up, and its hotels to capacity.

· The Repsol oil rig is in place in Cuban waters, ready to drill, and the Herald has a good overview of emergency response issues.

· EFE on the 150^th anniversary of Bacardi, a company that dreams of returning to Cuba, and – well, why not? – does business in communist China.

· Vancouver Sun: Two first-stringers on the Cuban women’s soccer team hopped a cab, went to the U.S. border, pulled their carnets de identidad out of their shoes, and asked to stay. Welcome to el Yuma.

· The New York Times Magazine interviews Sen. Marco Rubio.

· Cuba travel Christopher Baker, author of the Moon’s travel guide to Cuba, has a theory about the scarcity of medicines in Cuba.

Odds and ends

• Juventud Rebelde notes the death of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, reporting that the statement read on North Korean television said he died of “physical and mental exhaustion while on a train trip outside the capital.”

• Granma: A Vatican delegation visits Cuba to prepare the visit of the Pope, meets Raul Castro, no date announced.

• The State Department called on Cuba to respect Human Rights Week activities.

• Imagine: the Obama Administration retained the Bush director of Radio/TV Marti, and he carried out a personnel reduction in 2009 that shielded supporters and fired critics. That’s the conclusion of an independent arbitrator; Washington Post story here.

• Trabajadores: Cuba hit the record for arrivals of foreign visitors in one year last Tuesday. 2.53 million and counting.

• Reuters: Fernando Noy, a military officer who ran an important importing company is arrested on charges of corruption.

• AP goes to the Malecon to see how new economic policies are changing the neighborhood.

• “It would be a disgrace if the Obama administration broke with tradition and used a penny of that critical funding to reward political cronies,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in a Herald article on “complaints” about a USAID grant to the Cuban American National Foundation.

A better deal

One of the absurdities of Cuba’s economy is the small item in trade accounts identifying the importation of fruits and vegetables, largely for the tourist industry.

I suppose it’s possible that the fresh produce demands of hotels and restaurants can’t be fully satisfied year-round by Cuban agriculture, due to climate and seasonal cycles. But the real reason for the imports, and the uneven supply in hotels and restaurants, has to do with Cuban policy.

I made a mid-winter trip to Cuba recently and found wonderful tomatoes in abundance in homes and private restaurants. I then ate in some state restaurants where the salad offerings included cabbage and carrots, i.e. things that can be refrigerated for weeks.

Why? Because the government regulates the sale and distribution of food, and its scheme has not allowed farmers to sell directly to tourism installations. Cuban chefs in these establishments have to take what a clunky state enterprise offers. Unlike chefs anywhere else in the world, they can’t start their day by going to a farmers market or, better yet, by receiving the produce that they have contracted for a farm to deliver every day.

Until December 1.

An article in today’s Granma and new regulations published in the Gaceta Oficial announce that as of that date, direct contracting will be permitted. The state enterprise that now performs this task (the Empresa de Frutas Selectas, I believe) will not disappear, but it will have competition.

The idea, Granma explains, is to reduce spoilage, “to simplify the links between the primary producer and final consumer,” and to allow tourism installations to “take better advantage of the potential of all the forms of production at the local level.”

This decision may not be the most important in the economic reform battles, but it represents a loss for bureaucratic control freaks, a win for reformers, a win for farmers and people in the tourism industry who can now do their jobs better, a victory for decentralization, and one more sign that Cuba’s reformist government is willing to give up control and allow markets to function where planning has failed.