Full version of the Último Jueves panel, via WhatsApp, on March 25, 2021.
Participants:
Antonio Diaz Medina is a professor at the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Havana. A former employee of the agency Havanatur, he has worked in tourism for 20 years and another 20 as a diplomat. He is a regular contributor to the journal Temas.
Tania García Lorenzo is a Bachelor of Economics and holds a PhD in Economic Sciences of the University of Havana. She is a specialist in the economic dimensions of culture and international economic relations, as well as a Guest Professor at Centro Nacional de Superación Cultural of the Ministry of Culture. Member of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, the Department of Caribbean Studies of the University of Havana, and the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC).
Yociel Marrero Baez. Environmental Engineer, Director of the Economy and Responsible Consumption Program of the Antonio Nuñez Jiménez Foundation of Nature and Man. Today he strives to apply the concepts of Socio-Environmentally Responsible Business Management to the development of a "new economy" in Cuba.
Patricia Ramos Hernández. Economist and university professor, co-founder of Knocking on Cuba, an enterprise made of young professionals who, up until the inception of COVID-19, devoted themselves to managing itineraries, transportation services, experiences and tours for the tourism industry.
Moderator:
Rafael Hernández
Rafael Hernández: Welcome! This is the tenth panel we have done remotely since 2020 to date in order to maintain the continuity of Último Jueves, even if we cannot meet in our usual venue at the Fresa y Chocolate center. This one is dedicated to a topic that, to a large extent, has taken on special strategic significance; since the early 1990s, with the beginning of the Special Period, tourism became a kind of unexpected lifeline, an asset based on the availability of beaches, sun and foreign capital interested in investing, especially in the development of the external sector.
With the crisis that took place in this period, particularly in the late 1990s, in the sugar industry, tourism became what economists call the axis of capital accumulation. So when this change took place, it became the magnet for investment in construction, transportation, infrastructure, communications, etc., at first concentrated in enclaves and virgin areas, as the keys and beaches of some provinces typically are.
Subsequently, however, tourism has become an increasingly structural part of the economic strategy, not as an emergency asset, but as we define today as the driving force of the Cuban economy.
The purpose of this panel is to analyze what tourism means to Cuba's economic and social development, its advantages and disadvantages, its influence on Cuban society and culture, as well as its impact on the other spheres of national life and its problems and alternatives. Joining us to discuss this topic is a panel of four specialists who are going to answer our questions from their own perspectives. We thank them very much for having agreed to be here.
They are Antonio Díaz Medina, a professor at the Faculty of Tourism who boasts a long professional career and extensive hands-on experience in tourism both in Cuba and around the world. Tony has been a frequent contributor to journal Temas on this subject. Tania García Lorenzo, member of our Advisory Board, is an economist, probably one of the people who best masters the problems of the economy in its cultural dimension, in addition to other fields. I thank her for helping us to have this panel. Yociel Marrero, a researcher at the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation of Nature and Man, is an environmental engineer who has been with us in previous Último Jueves panels. Finally, Patricia Ramos Hernández, who joins us for the first time. She is an economist and a university professor, but we have invited her mainly because of her experience as an entrepreneur at the head of the Knocking on Cuba agency, which has proved that the non-state sector can come up with initiatives for the benefit of tourism.
We have also invited foreign tour operators, who unfortunately have not been able to attend, and people in government who work in the fields of culture and tourism and, for reasons beyond their control, have not been able to join us. We are very pleased to have this panel, which brings together very different perspectives and experiences, and we hope that you will make the most of it.
The questions we have submitted to the panel have to do with key tourism issues and their relationship with society and the country. We are sure you will be able to deal with them very well.
1. What is the predominant model of tourism, the one that prevails, and in which countries? Is it different from those of the Caribbean Basin? What are its features? Does it have any distinctive characteristics peculiar to Cuba?
Antonio Diaz Medina: From an economic point of view, we can define our tourism as an oligopoly, something debatable if only two actors participate in it: the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR), whose role is less and less important, and Gaviota, which occupies a dominant position for being the only one that invests and grows since 2004. The private sector is a minority and concentrated in lodgings and restaurants.
From the point of view of the product offered, it is a receptive model, where "sun and beach" predominates as a modality, with city tourism having less and less relative weight despite its great potential, largely unexploited or even conceived as such. I think this is because Cuba still suffers from "pseudo-ideological" prejudices, toned down out of necessity, that suppressed international tourism until the late 1980s, and then the crisis of the 1990s turned it into our first source of foreign currency.
For the same reason, sun and beach destinations, except for Varadero Beach and some others, remain isolated from the surrounding population, weakening them by cutting off the complement that Cubans can, should and want to give them.
It is different from those of the Caribbean in this same respect, improved since 2008, when the ban was lifted so that the Cubans could visit the destinations in keys and book hotels payable in convertible Cuban pesos (CUC). The other big difference is the absence of the main market in our area, the United States, which, on the one hand, stimulates the arrival of Canadians like no other destination in the Caribbean and, on the other hand, deprives us of 50% of the potential income.
Sun and beach tourism is safer than in the rest of the Caribbean, but it still lacks the link with our society, with the Cuban people and their culture. These reasons, and others to be established, have made it the cheapest, the one with the lowest income per visitor in the area, namely 30% lower. In spite of its charm, which no administrative measure can possibly diminish, city tourism still suffers the lack of more varied and creative offers and more choices in terms of providers.
Tania García: Thank you for inviting me to participate in this virtual meeting. This panel focuses on the future because tourism has undergone a transformation as societies and economies changed. This has been the case throughout history. [Tourism] has suffered serious losses in times of decline and has proved to have great capacity for recovery. The question also leads us to think of a world without pandemics; wondering when this will be possible is part of the optimism.
The pandemic has either introduced or accelerated significant changes in all spheres of life in society, and will therefore have an impact on the future that we want to attain and on the social processes that will develop therein. The societies that emerge from this pandemic will not be the same, nor will the motivations, uncertainties, fears and precautions be the same or similar. Mistrust of distant consumption displaces the demand toward nearby recreation areas. Now, the question of which model of tourism [to encourage] starts from a polysemic concept. There is no “universally accepted” definition of the goods and services that make up tourism, Miguel Figueras said. In my humble opinion, in Cuba and many Caribbean countries, the "sun and beach" type has prevailed, not only because of its results, but also because of what I notice in the intentions of policymakers, who have failed to make a complete transition to a tourism based on diversified incentives and varied entertainment. In global terms, cultural, health, nature and event tourism are still incipient. Because of its extent and expansion, it has gone from being elitist to a form of mass tourism. In the Caribbean, it is easier to notice the transition from a tourism of leisure to a tourism of cultural research and enrichment, despite the existence of many "non-places", or places with no identity.
Yociel Marrero: It is well known that the prevailing model of tourism in Cuba is "sun and beach" in facilities operated on an all-inclusive basis. This model has been practiced around the world for many years, but its deepest roots are in the major tourist centers of the Caribbean, although in the last decade its implementation has begun to slow down a bit. The main centers are still in the region of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and Cancun and Acapulco in Mexico, in addition to the Cuban tourist centers. Many other Caribbean island states have already started to move away from this model, mostly because it involves a high level of consumption of natural resources (mainly water and energy) and a large amount of waste. It also brings a low profit margin to the host countries and, therefore, it contributes little to the socioeconomic development of their communities. In the case of Cuba, this situation is further aggravated because it is highly dependent on importing most of the resources needed for the tourism sector.
Patricia Ramos: First of all, I would like to thank the panel coordinators for inviting me to share my experience as an entrepreneur in the tourism sector. I am Patricia, co-founder of Knocking on Cuba, a venture that brings together (or used to, strictly speaking and considering the involuntary pause that COVID-19 has imposed) a group of young professionals, most of them economists. We started out in the field of lodging management, but then, as we grew as a team and consolidated, we incorporated almost all complementary services: organization of itineraries, transportation, experiences or tours, etc. I must clarify that I have not approached this subject academically; therefore, I am mostly sharing with you my perception as an entrepreneur.
I believe that, since the dawn of this sector in the 1990s, an extensive development model has prevailed in Cuba, based on generalized access, the incorporation of tourist centers, and the expansion of capacities. Therefore, the key variable on which television campaigns have relied has been the number of foreign visitors rather than others associated with indicators such as income per tourist-day, profitability or cost per peso earned, or the domestic component of the sector's costs (to follow the sector's linkages with the national industry).
This typical model of underdeveloped countries relies on the advantage offered by their natural resources, in this case sun and beach. Therefore, the sector has been slow to spill over into other areas, since visitors generally spend little and stay most of the time in facilities that guarantee all-inclusive services.
One element that characterizes this model in Cuba is the preponderance of the state sector. When it took off in the 1990s, the tourism industry made some room for an incipient private sector allowed to rent spaces, open restaurants, etc., but it somehow reached a plateau in terms of the number of people authorized to do it on the basis of self-employment as a result of a policy of non-expansion of the non-state economic sector. It was not until 2010 that we saw a certain stimulus to the private sector, when it was authorized to hire labor and started to provide many more services to the tourism industry, which enjoyed a significant additional boost as of December 17, 2014 following the declaration of Presidents Obama and Raul.
2. What have been the main achievements of tourism as an economic policy? What are its costs?
Antonio Díaz: Its main achievement is that it restarted and developed. The fact that it became for several years the main source of foreign currency is not the result, but simply the consequence of the deterioration of the rest of the sectors of the economy since 1990, temporarily compensated by exported health services, which no longer manage to outmatch tourism in terms of income. The tourism industry has created more than one hundred thousand direct jobs and hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs, but [exploiting] not even 50% of Cuba’s potential as a destination. It has been “a locomotive with very few cars”.
However, this is not entirely the responsibility of tourism; the main cause lies in the economic policies applied in the country that most Cuban economists have analyzed and criticized. The Party and the State recognized this fact ten years ago and decided to set things right by designing changes that have been practically frozen until today, when they finally seem to be under way.
Some Cuban economists criticize, groundlessly in my opinion, that the Cuban tourism model is poorly designed because it depends on the tour operators and prevents us from taking more of the added value of the products that we offer. However, these specialists do not seem to know the ins and outs of this business, especially for a sun and beach destination with a bit of city tourism in the heart of the Caribbean. Such dependence on the tour operators has been essential; in fact, Cuba qualified the first ones in the early 1990s, when Havanatur established companies of this type in more than ten major sources of inbound visitors in Canada, Europe and Latin America.
The ecological costs have not been significant in non-human environments, that is, the rest of the biological species and their habitat, but they have been so in social terms. First, with very negative effects by denying the country's main tourist product to the domestic market, to the Cubans, for almost twenty years, until the wrong was reversed in 2008. Throw in the fact that there are still limitations for cooperative and private entrepreneurship to revolutionize Cuba's tourist offer in an intelligent and fruitful connection with the state. This goes for both sun and beach destinations—which must be expanded to integrate the entire local population—and the cities—where they have consolidated a very valuable position in the lodging and restaurant sector—as well as in other areas, such as the countryside, where it is barely present in Viñales and Trinidad.
Tania García: As an economic sector, tourism is of indisputable relevance. Its virtues are undeniable because it is actively present in the four economic fundamentals. Namely, it generates economy for the GDP (a study indicated that at some point, in Cuba, it accounted for 7%); it generates employment; it influences the Balance of Payments and its companies contribute to the nation's budget. Nevertheless, we must demand more from it, because it requires a very high level of investment, both in hotels and in other related economic sectors. As an economic activity, tourism is multisectoral. It could be a true driving force for the economy if the consumables came mostly from the domestic economy, with the required quality, of course. If the domestic economy fails to meet these needs, it becomes highly dependent on the external market, not only in terms of inbound customers but also of the resources that its full operation requires. In other words, the effectiveness of economic policy in this sector depends on its capacity to drag along the rest of the sectors of the national economy.
It is true that this sector can provide liquidity to the national economy due to the speed of its capital rotation, but only to the extent that it can count on an efficient financial system that won’t get into arrears. Without public statistics that allow us to evaluate the efficiency of tourism in terms of net income, it is uncomfortable to give an insight, but two elements seem relevant to me. 1) What is tourism’s level of sunk costs (those incurred in the past and not yet recovered)? and 2) what is the level of risk that its investments can bear? These two elements are important because foreign direct investment plays a major role in the tourism industry throughout the Caribbean and it seems that Cuba is no exception. Likewise, tourism has an important presence in Cuba's Business Portfolio. This makes us think that the use of capacities and their performance should be a fundamental part of any feasibility studies.
Patricia Ramos: The main achievement is in the multiplier effect that trickled down from tourism to the rest of the economic sectors at the height of the crisis of the 1990s. Tourism became a pivotal sector, generating linkages with agriculture, construction, maintenance services, transportation, and the manufacturing industry, among others, which turned it into an economic driving force. It was a wagon-pulling sector. Thus, for many years the income associated with tourism was Cuba's first source of export income, until 2005, when the export of professional services (mainly medical) took over this position.
Now, I believe that the fundamental criticism in a general sense lies in the prevailing and sustained focus on this sector. The country needs to produce goods, material wealth, and there will be no structural change in the country without a change in the pattern of productive specialization. Cuba has an industrial and manufacturing sector in need of attention. Therefore, the extreme attention given to this sector has created a decades-long vulnerability by making us look like a single-product country, with the risks involved in putting all the eggs in one basket. We have plenty of experience in this regard.
There are other elements that can be considered as costs, and that have more to do with the model followed by the sector internally. I could mention three aspects here:
a) First, the emphasis on the sun-and-beach product and its proliferation through the "all-inclusive" variant. This modality has proven to have limitations for transitioning to an intensive model and its costs for a responsible environmental management.
b) Second, the limited offer of hotel add-ons (I open parentheses here: in 2016, the launching by the Airbnb platform of the product "Experiences" was a convincing demonstration of a dormant creative potential waiting for a chance, not to wake up, but to jump out of bed. The private sector’s extra-hotel offer that came out of this opportunity opened a door that we should not close. At some point, the Cuban market even managed to have more than five hundred officially active experiences. Experiences as opposed to traditional tours. It was a novel, personalized product with a spectrum ranging from attempts to teach about the complexity of the markets to responsible fishing at the seawall Malecón, Afro culture, traditional food, the Masonic community, photography, dance experiences, tattoos, bicycle tours, visits to peasant families... the list is endless.
c) This last point leads me to the third element, which has to do with the fact that there is no integrated conception of the tourist offer. The phenomenon continues to suffer from a dichotomous approach, as if the competition were between the state and the private sector, instead of between Cuba and other similar destinations. That is not thinking as a country. The instability of the regulatory framework for the operation of the private sector is proof of this.
An example is the resolution that, in the summer of 2017, interrupted for an indefinite time (it turned out to be for a period of more than one year) the granting of 27 types of licenses including some directly or indirectly linked to tourism, such as the leasing of rooms and houses, lodging management, food and drink services, and others under which certain services were made available (experiences, for instance). This was irresponsible and even disrespectful. It caused an unexpected pause that delayed the recovery of ongoing investments, dismembered and interrupted projects, and, above all—where I believe the fundamental cost lies—it undermined the confidence of the population, as it proved the instability of the regulatory framework on which the investment decisions made by the private sector in Cuba are based. I wonder what would become of the state business fabric if every time a corrupt official were detected in a company we decided to close the company. It is not rational.
Finally, it is surprising to see in the so-called "negative list" of self-employed activities recently published—even if it was an expected measure, and a welcomed one for the change of concept—the prohibition, for example, to organize certain tourist activities. In practice, this is an obstacle to self-employment, as it protects the market shares of the agencies currently engaged in those activities.
3. To what extent has tourism effectively managed environmental resources? How has it struck a balance between the natural and the built environment? Is it possible to measure the contributions and costs of tourism in these environments?
Antonio Díaz: For me, the difference between the natural and the built environment does not exist. Everything built by man is natural, it is part of his nature, and it is his contribution as a species, much as some of these contributions represent an unnecessary damage to all living beings, including himself.
I was able to see in Africa “skyscrapers” made by ants, which are a thousand times taller than they are and, in addition, destroy the soil where they are built, making them useless for other plants to grow or for man to cultivate. Moreover, it does not occur to anyone to say that these “buildings” are not natural. Based as it is on constant growth and enrichment, human nature affects the rest of nature, which defends itself by trying to redress the ecological imbalance caused by human beings. I see the pandemic as a possible example of this. The pandemic effect will fade away, but it will leave everlasting marks on the way we interact and travel.
What we need to do now is acknowledge the fact that, as a civilization, we are past the age in which we can keep growing. It is imperative that we extend our existence to what for a human being would be 90 years—as a civilization, we are over 50, according to my estimate. In two words: recognize that we are old as a species and it is pointless to deny our age.
Tourism is part of human nature today; it is one of the thousands of mutations of civilization. However, tourism is under heavy pressure to prevent its offers, especially in the lodging and local transportation sectors, from causing any harm to nature. There is rejection of the gentrification that tourism has generated in several cities. Science and society have already measured and denounced all this. In Cuba, the damage is not significant, but some destinations are already in danger as the uncontrolled growth of tourism continues: Old Havana, Viñales, Trinidad... We must protect them in the same way we fight for the conservation of the tiger, the elephants and the inhabitants of the sea.
Trying to return to the levels of the 2019 tourist operation and continue growing from there cannot be the goal. We can have 30% less visitors with the same economic earnings if we improve the offer. This is the way forward, but it seems that we will not take it, since the excessive investment in new hotels continues and, paradoxically, the existing ones have occupancy rates below 50% and 20% of their rooms out of service but they are not being repaired or improved.
Tania García: According to a survey that I learned about thanks to Dr. José Luis Perelló, 58% of the tourists polled prefer a sustainable, safe and environmentally friendly form of tourism. That is, at least, a good intention, although the proportion is lower than it should be, because life has shown that we have a huge debt with the environment. Cruise tourism has become one of the most prominent modalities in recent years. It is, without a doubt, a prestigious form of consumption but also one of the most environmentally damaging. Perelló and Rafael Betancourt point this out because it can be a threat to our built heritage and urban infrastructure, due to the congestion it generates, its non-compliance with environmental regulations for the operation of vessels in protected marine areas, and the lack of indicators to measure its impact as well as of standards to guide its management.
In Cuba, the efforts made in the context of Tarea Vida [national strategy for coping with climate change] for the protection of the environment are well known and recognized; however, I would like to emphasize the very high demand for energy resources in tourism, including fuel and water, and the need to avoid waste and pollution. We are still a long way from making a rational use of these natural resources; even though they are, in part, renewable, there is a danger that the increase in their use and pollution will exceed their self-regenerating capacity. This refers particularly to certain facilities that can cause imbalances likely to be difficult to solve, such as, for example, golf courses.
Yociel Marrero: During the first stage of tourism development in Cuba, the industry’s environmental impact was not duly taken into account, given the pressing need for its expansion. There is no denying that in the last ten years the policies and strategies of tourism development have paid proper attention to the interactions with, and effects on, the natural resources by promoting conservation actions and appropriate regulations to invest and exploit tourist areas. However, that is not good enough. For tourism in Cuba to approach the idyllic postulate of “industry without chimneys”, the design of its facilities has to abide by the most current technological requirements of environmental management. It must bring down the levels of consumption of natural resources (water and energy) and implement a more effective waste management system, starting by reducing as much as possible the use of plastics and other polluting substances. We need to apply already proven irrigation methods for gardens, air conditioning systems and laundries in order to reduce tourism’s ecological footprint. Tourism investments should include support for local biodiversity conservation initiatives capable of restoring and protecting our natural habitats.
The future tourist facilities will have to be bioclimatic, adapted to our increasingly high temperatures, with a ventilation system that reduces the need for air conditioning and the use of artificial lighting. There are new types of constructions, materials and techniques, developed in national universities, which, while guaranteeing the durability of the investment and not implying the use of more resources, make it possible for the new facilities to have better quality due to their integration with the other elements of the ecosystem.
The works developed to protect the coastal dunes in the main beaches of the country are praiseworthy and essentially guarantee the beauty and lasting appeal of these tourist areas.
Making an accurate measurement of tourism’s benefits and costs involves the development of well-defined indicators that are typical of our reality and linked to all the socioeconomic aspects that tourism development should influence.
Patricia Ramos: Undoubtedly, there are adverse environmental effects behind a model of extensive growth. The increase in city tourism generates more garbage, which I believe we could use to our advantage. Nonetheless, I think that the new initiatives are more individual results than an intentional policy of the local authorities. At least in my opinion as a lodging manager and a citizen, much remains to be done from the educational and communicational point of view, and then for the creation of material conditions for the classification and processing of garbage. Today everything goes to the same place: jars, containers, bottles, boxes, etc., and this is very basic, it is the first step, so to speak.
I remember when some years ago I attended a lecture given by a former minister of Costa Rica as part of a conference at the Faculty of Economics. He talked about the concept behind Costa Rica's tourism model, and said that it was in opposition to Cancun's model. The campaign message they were projecting was, “Send your children to Cancun; you, come to Costa Rica”. They went for a responsible segment, with much fewer visitors, with medium-to-high purchasing power. I think that is where we should look to learn given our recent experience.
4. To what extent has tourism, as a whole, valued culture and social development? Has it made them accessible to visitors? Has it favored them? Has it made them known? Has it had an impact on the country's image? Why?
Antonio Díaz: In our case, we failed to understand tourism as what it is: a social phenomenon, born in the English-European 18th century, which eventually became the main reason for travel. Nowadays it generates half of international travel and boasts a solid demand in destinations that create an offer of such dimensions that it is even considered one of the first sectors of the economy. Cuba assumed it as the latter, a source of income and a means to export services that generate the resources that the country needed and still needs today, desperately so.
Tourism is, above all else, a social and, therefore, cultural issue. Failure to recognize that fact leads to the model that we described in a previous answer, the one designed to detach foreign visitors from the local society. This disconnection brings with it other problems for culture, as it contributes to the creation of “cultural products” only for tourists that denaturalize our cultural essence.
I believe that tourism has favored neither culture nor social development in the zones where it is as much practiced as it can and should, although it has made an impact on the entire society. It has even inspired Cuban youth to take university courses, and not only because of the potential income they could make, but simply because it is the nation’s “first industry”.
Back in the 1990s, I heard a high-ranking Cuban military chief voice his concern about the image of Cuba that foreign tourists took with them, because most of the Cubans who interacted with them were antisocial. We have gradually overcome this in the course of time, as the overwhelmingly healthy majority of Cuban society has related more to the visitors, but not so after the access of the domestic market to all destinations. Naturally, all this has made an impact on the country's image in a negative way, as described in the above anecdote.
Tania García: Tourism is, above all, a cultural industry, because its content relies on a people-to-people exchange between visitors and residents. It is an encounter in search of reciprocal knowledge. Its cultural and intellectual worth is the greatest heritage treasured by the peoples, as the cultural creations and processes that emerge in each site give you the opportunity to approach tourism from different angles and the chance of offering new forms of cultural and heritage tourism.
Therefore, it is not only a matter of attracting more tourists to visit our geographical areas, but also of providing as a main incentive the creative richness of our artists, performers, writers, painters, filmmakers, etc., and learning about the legends and the history of our beautiful places, some of which have been granted World Heritage status. Not only do our cultural production and processes add value to the tourist product, they should be its very essence. That is why I think that the national projection of tourism in Cuba has not yet sufficiently valued social culture and development. It is not about embellishing tourism or displaying our culture in a showcase, which has sometimes ended up being a caricature. On the other hand, it is not possible to cloister millions of tourists in hotels, no matter how large they may be. Tourists should enjoy culture there where it is created: in theaters, galleries, museums, fairs and exhibitions; and participate in popular festivities.
Nevertheless, this process has to rely on a mutual agreement between political operators and cultural promoters. It is also a way of promoting the country's cultural production, that is, a win-win process. This is the cultural relationship of the 2030 Agenda. The proliferation of tourist routes, already practiced in Cuba, makes it necessary to diversify the tourist offer and the benefits of cultural tourism to the sector. This makes it possible to work with a view to making the demand less seasonal-oriented, boost the local economy and counteract the environmental impact.
Yociel Marrero: It is undeniable that tourism has influenced the valorization of some aspects of our culture and the quality of life of multiple social sectors. The exponential increase in recent years in the number of foreign visitors has led to their direct interaction with our population and a more accurate knowledge of our values as a nation, which influences their image of our country. Of course, we run the risk of seeing distortions, since tourism development has not always been fully supported by the wide range of cultural features of our society. Increasing tourism’s influence on social development should be a goal in the process of organization and diversification that the industry is going through.
Patricia Ramos: I think that in this there are pending issues as well. In fact, part of our initial motivation as a venture was to use our proposals—from accommodation choices to organized talks in our sightseeing tours and experiences—to keep our customers away from the stereotyped logic about Cuba that we felt prevailed in the traditional offer that international travelers receive when they arrive through tour agencies and other formal channels.
Cuba is a very peculiar country by virtue of its glories, shortcomings, amazing history, musical talent, political system, economy… There is much to show of the real Cuba, other than the prevailing clichés about our cigars, rum and Tropicana dancers. I think that an intentional alliance between the state sector and the authorities of the industry with the community of lessors and other private and local actors linked to tourism (directly or indirectly) could complement and help shape an image of Cuba that is much closer to reality, which is very diverse.
For instance, I remember with enthusiasm very passionate talks with a fellow entrepreneur who designed an experience, first promoted through Airbnb, where most of the activities included in her tour took place in her zone, including a visit to the local museum, for example. A few months after this initiative, there was an explosion of visits to the museum as a result of her drive and the way she aroused the interest in the visitors, with the consequent effects on the personal economies of all those who began to join and contribute to the project.
There are many examples, but I do not want to base my intervention on anecdotes. The idea I would like to emphasize is that there is a lot of Cuba to show outside the four beautiful squares of Old Havana. That is what giving value to culture and helping tourism have an unstoppable trickle-down effect over society is all about. The only way to succeed is through an integrated management of the industry that takes into account the advantages of both the big hotel facilities and the small and medium-sized businesses that chose to join this sector and contribute in some way.
5. What is the importance of local actors and factors for tourism development? How capable are they of controlling tourism’s impact on local development, resources, foreign investments and social and cultural life?
Antonio Díaz: Something recognized years ago and now reflected in the changes prioritized by the country is that today the local impact is minimal because our system of government is extremely centralized. But it will take time to achieve the necessary decentralization, not only by changing the regulations, but also the human beings who will be in charge of its implementation through a grassroots government that won’t wait for directives and decisions about what can be done. This will not be solved by training today’s leaders, but by screening them according to their results to keep the few who have real possibilities of coming to terms with the new circumstances and promote the thousands of potential cadres who can really make a difference.
The local actors cannot control the effects of tourism any more than they can control its investment and development, or whether they will participate or not, or in what terms when they do. What I see in a town like Bauta—where I spent a good part of the pandemic—is a very poor economic and political management. There is no initiative whatsoever and weak controls, with barely enough results to avoid chaos.
In spite of all the obstacles to prevent tourists from being in touch with the population, there are plenty of examples of such contacts, and it is usually a very good experience for both. The tourists are known to be in permanent contact with the staff of their hotel and other services, but that is only a small part of what they demand and need to feel that they are in Cuba. I witnessed, in the early days of Cayo Largo del Sur as a paradisiacal sun and beach destination, a supposedly “unusual” fact. The Cubans who worked there stayed the night in a small village several kilometers away from the hotel and, even so, several tourists managed to spent time with them in the evenings, at a very humble nightclub with an open bar and recorded music, called “La Chusmita”. Coincidentally, that is how the workers at the Ariguanabo Textile Plant affectionately nicknamed their cafeteria, where my mother worked for many years.
Cuba is the Caribbean country with the lowest income per tourist. If we expect to increase this indicator, we must understand the needs of the tourists who visit us.
It is also possible to establish backwards linkages, promoting associations with local productive groups to insure the logistics of the tourists visiting the territory, and forward as well, with joint promotion of exports of cultural goods and services, starting from the demand generated during their stay.
Nevertheless, this question breaks out into others that are essential: What is the capacity of the local actors and factors to control the impact of tourism on its development? To what degree are the interests of the territory subordinated or not? It is necessary to carry out a process of negotiation and understanding, of joint consideration, together with the design of public policies to shelter local development.
Yociel Marrero: Local actors and factors must become the most important active interlocutors of tourism development, so they must be empowered and trained. There must be a structure to promote their participation in the control and decision-making process related to tourism development in their regions.
We must bring new voices into the investment and decision-making process (as in all branches of tourism) capable of representing different social sectors. The program for investments that exists in each municipality (group, vice-presidency, division, or whatever its name is) should extend its scope and have a multisectoral membership structure to evaluate the investments in its jurisdiction, even if they are national investments, and to exchange views with the responsible investing entity. Thus, they can answer in a participatory manner questions, such as, Where and in what do we need more investments? What criteria we will apply to assess an investment as advantageous and the investor as a safe partner? Will we invest in the recovery of what already exists, in new infrastructure, or in the qualification and updating of the technical and professional competence of our labor force?
This is the only way to know what kind of tourism we want, in order to put into practice the conceptualization and the “vision of the nation” we have conceived. Every investment and project will have to start from its social and environmental projection as the only sure way to obtain the expected economic returns and support for social policies. Any investment has to be conceived, from the beginning, using local labor force and resources to ensure that they contribute directly to the welfare of the region where they are made.
Patricia Ramos: Local actors are given more or less importance for the development of the industry depending on whether they are recipients of vertical policies or protagonists of tourism activity in their regions. I identify, making a very basic simplification, two “models”: the Varadero Beach model and the Viñales Valley model. In the former, the locality manages the impacts and consequences of an imposed type of development, based on centralized decisions about the resort. In the latter, the development of the industry is in the hands of local actors who decided the pace and lines of growth. The vast majority of the local economy depends on the tourism they decided to develop. This is more complicated in the case of large cities like Havana, where these models could work in combination. There will always be positive and negative externalities at local level.
Regarding investments, I think that boosting foreign investment at the local level and empowering the municipal administration councils (CAM) to approve minor investment projects could be useful to speed up the mobilization of resources. In the case of “opaque” municipalities, this is still the quickest and most efficient way to bring them into the light. However, the recently published 2019-2020 portfolio of foreign investment opportunities is still prey to a sectorial and vertical approach, much like Act 118 of 2014 itself that supports investment activity. Even though the regions will be the main physical recipients of any future project, and probably the major suppliers of labor force, the CAMs are not present at the relevant approval levels, so they operate under a “price-accepting” logic. Changing this in terms of conception and action is a huge challenge. In the spirit of making the old practices horizontal and banishing them, the idea is that the region, as the foundation, should have a say in the matter.
6. Should tourism be transformed to serve the national development model in a better way? To be consistent with its mixed structure? What should we keep as it is and what should we change regarding tourism?
Antonio Díaz: The economic underdevelopment of the country affects tourism; the destination is what attracts tourists, so it is a matter of developing the country without changing its essence. Cuba has to continue being as humane, supportive, altruistic and hospitable as can be expected.
Tourism has not been able to be the pivot of the rest of the national economy to its full potential. We already talked partially about the reasons for this. The blockade has played its nefarious role in some sectors that could have been more developed otherwise, such as air transportation, where we are obliged to think creatively about a policy of greater freedom of the air.
Still, it’s the so-called “internal blockade” which has caused the most preventable damage, since it’s the one that we can abolish. The current changes seem to be heading towards an Economic Reform that, if not as profound as required, will not have the necessary impact also needed in the tourism sector. And this industry can and should be the leader of this intensification, provided that:
1. MINTUR becomes the methodological director and the strategic concert of promotion and development of the destination, discarding its role as administrative manager.
2. All tourism companies become completely independent and have full control over their management.
3. Gaviota, S.A. moves to the civil sector of the economy and divides its components into the necessary independent enterprises, namely hotel chains, Gaviota Tours, etc.
4. The industry keeps the national hotel chains and improves the attributes of the product that defines every one of them.
5. Every economically unjustified OSDE (Higher Organization of Business Management) is dissolved; first of all, Viajes Cuba, which is nothing but the sum of all travel agencies subordinated to MINTUR.
6. MINTUR revises its contracts with foreign hotel chains, which have given us so much but from which we have learned so little, contrary to what Fidel asked us to do.
7. The industry gets rid of all obstacles to the development of cooperative and private entrepreneurship in the sector, whether or not it is linked to the state, especially in the case of travel agencies, tour guides and other key players, in order to revolutionize the provision of tours and experiences. The Cuban people can and want to put their wisdom and culture at the disposal of the Cuban tourism products.
8. Bring down the artificial barriers that detach tourists from the Cuban people, without detriment to the ecological protection that the Cubans need and demand both for their values and culture and for the rest of the nature that we enjoy.
9. MINTUR implements a consistent strategy to increase our income per tourist.
10. The investment policy is readjusted to salvage what we have already built and improve it while we are at it.
Tania García: Cuba, like the Caribbean, has in tourism one of the main axes of accumulation. As a result of various adverse behaviors, both internal and external in origin, and mainly due to the pandemic that has shaken the world since the beginning of 2020, Cuba and this economic sector are facing one of the most comprehensive and long-lived periods of crisis in the country’s history. Their recovery depends on their coordinated efforts, but also on multiple external factors, not only on those that determine the arrival of tourists but also, and mainly, on the international supply chains. Forecasts predict that the revival will take place gradually, because it will depend, primarily, on the recovery of the motivation for distant consumption. However, at present, and simultaneously with the pandemic, the blockade and its internal shortcomings, the country is dealing with the restructuring of its economic model.
In order to make progress with the reform approved by its highest governing and political bodies, this sector should be transformed from an enclave and monopolistic structure and operation to one in line with the general structure and operation of the model to be implemented, which is supposed to make great strides toward decentralization and different forms of ownership. A development model that transfers to the grassroots the fundamental axis of accumulation needs a tourism program that also has its power base there, as well as in the region and the nation. This economic sector has to measure its results by not only the number of tourists and the support or backing for the country's economic emergencies, but also by the correlation between hotel stock, arrivals and yield per dollar invested, that is, by the effectiveness and efficiency of the country's economic capital under its care.
Yociel Marrero: Definitely, the approach and structure of tourism development in Cuba must change, especially when we enter the post-pandemic recovery stage. It is the best time to do it, not that there are many options deemed consistent with the new scenario that we will face. It must lean more on the diversity and uniqueness of our natural and cultural values, that all forms of socioeconomic management get involved and adapt to the characteristics of each region, and that the benefits have a direct effect on the communities and their welfare.
It is necessary to resize this sector, diversify the scale and scope of its offers, and promote rural tourism, nature tourism, the multiple experiences of urban and rural life, and cultural tourism, and not only on the basis of the established “clichés” but with the intentional and orderly participation of non-state forms of property. This is an opportunity for farmers, fishermen, transporters, local guides, promoters of autochthonous traditions, etc.
A “not all-inclusive” model of tourism would allow us to provide an excellent, personalized service, with less consumption of natural resources and with greater economic profitability as well. Maybe it is time to think about it, taking advantage of the fact that, in this field, all the guidelines must change so that tourism can be less massive and more select and reduced. Focusing it on the values of nature and society, and not only on sun and beach, rumba, cigars and rum, is a necessity. It is significant that the World Tourism Organization has named 2020 the “Year of Tourism and Rural Development” to “raise awareness of the importance of defending, protecting and developing rural areas and raising the level of well-being of the people who live in them”.
In the last few years, the Cuban tourism industry and its associated institutions have developed a very good infrastructure and professional training programs for the employees. We must keep them that way, expanding and updating their programs and systematizing the results. Only this will make it possible for tourism development in Cuba to comply with the three established pillars of sustainable tourism: environmentally friendly practices that go beyond the basics; protection of the natural and cultural heritage; and contribution to the social and economic well-being of local communities.
Patricia Ramos: The first question that we should ask ourselves is what the national development model is about and what its goals are. If the time horizon is 2030, what are the goals that we will check then, and what are the key sectors that we are or will be promoting to achieve those goals? What are the policies and actions that we should take at any given time to promote those sectors? Is tourism one of them? How to disaggregate temporarily the goals that we will define? The description of a past development model tends to be much simpler than the construction of a future one. This is a necessary and still unfinished debate, one in which the analysis of the sector must be inserted.
However, my answer to the question of whether the Cuban tourism industry should undergo a transformation is, yes. I am going to mention first what constitutes an exogenous and common variable for all the economies of the world, due to the different circumstances that it imposes on the development of the sector: the pandemic caused by COVID-19. What the world population has lived through in the last year has drastically changed the notion of tourism as we know it and practice it. The world has changed, and tourism has to adapt to it. Practices, habits and routines that seemed unheard-of a little more than a year ago have become natural and part of our daily lives. These are not times of large hotel facilities with huge communal swimming pools and crowded buffet services. We will require the cooperation of all sciences, but the industry will necessarily go through a scientific revolution.
Secondly, in the case of Cuba, there were already signs of a deterioration of the extensive growth model. I think that we should start by encouraging a reflection in order to identify the objective behind the sector's empowerment and, based on that objective, build on and render accounts with the right indicators to identify the function that matters to us: Tourism as the driving force of national industry? Our concern then would be how much of the inputs of tourism are produced locally (i.e. not imported). Tourism as a source of foreign currency earnings for the country? Of interest then are variables such as revenue per tourist/day, or cost per peso of revenue. In 2018, for example, the average revenue per visitor was 30% lower than in 2011, and yet it was in 2018 that the number of international visitors reached a peak (over four and a half million travelers).
Then I would go for the introduction of health and nature tourism with as much energy as we once promoted the “sun and beach” aspect. If health is one of Cuba's main competitive advantages in the world because of its position, it would be convenient for tourism to set its sights on this sector, among other selected segments, given the favorable trickle-down effect that it would cause on the deteriorated infrastructure of the country's hospitality industry.
The control of COVID-19 in the country, together with the transcendental fact of having five vaccine candidates in advanced stages of development, undoubtedly contributes to the perception of a safe destination and stands as an incentive to change the direction of the industry’s development model.
Rafael Hernández: I am very grateful to the panelists for the clarity of their statements and their focus on these central issues. Even though they do not cover all the problems related to the horizon of this panel, they do address some key topics, so thank you for your straight and clear comments.
Now I would like to give the floor to our audience. We have a number of interventions, questions and comments. Before that, however, and in order to spur debate, I will ask the panelists some other questions.
As I understood, you all agree with the definition of the “sun and beach” model as the pattern that reflects Cuban tourism policy. Now, is that what foreign tourists come to Cuba looking for? None of the panelists referred to the level and type of consumption—not only based on sun and beaches that characterizes part of those tourists. Do we know why they come to Cuba instead of Cancun, Punta Cana, Bahamas, etc.? What makes Cuba different? What do not only Canadian but also European and Latin American families, as well as those who travel from the United States, come looking for? What image do they have of Cuba other than its sunlight and beaches?
My second provocative question to the panel is this: everyone agrees on the convenience of a tourism industry aligned with the new economic model. Why would a tourism program where the public sector, the private sector, the cooperative sector and foreign investment are articulated, as such a model is supposed to do, necessarily be better and more efficient? If the country has few resources, would it not be better that they are concentrated in the hands of one or two large public sector corporations?
My third and no less provocative question is the following: the panelists agree on the convenience of decentralizing and “municipalizing” tourism, leaving to grassroots actors all related decisions and offers and, and to some extent, the ways to benefit from it and to make the best of the Cuban reality more accessible. What lessons, however, can we learn from those cases in which local actors are the ones who design the tourism product? I am thinking of Trinidad or Viñales, as you already mentioned here: are these examples models of social development, environmental management, authentic cultural production, articulation with the national economy, etc.?
Luis Marcelo (Researcher): First of all, I would like to congratulate the panel for their excellent comments. Mine is motivated by question six. I have always considered that the facilities of Cuban hotel chains should have the same autonomy as the best hotels of international chains, as a starting point to improve the necessary service quality. Do you think so too, and what are the main challenges in this regard?
Omar Everleny (Economist, full professor at the University of Havana): I think tourism is here to stay; obviously, it has to be an entirely different kind of tourism. I think Cuba would be wise to boost medical tourism; this is a window of opportunity for Cuba in this post-pandemic stage. On the one hand, it could reactivate the economy, and on the other hand, it would increase the prestige of our biopharmaceutical industry. In other words, it is not unreasonable to promote a type of tourism that includes vaccination against the SARS-COV-2 virus—the cause of the disease—and perhaps alternative treatments. That is, to move a little away from the sun-and-beach option as part of that diversification of services, which is not so bad; what was indeed bad was the decision to implement an extensive model in the absence of an extra-hotel industry. I think that Cuba, with its advantage of being one of the first countries in Latin America that has managed to develop vaccines against the pandemic, could try to attract tourists who can also get a vaccine in Cuba.
I also think that the extensive development of hotels in the capital should be analyzed down to the last detail, especially because there are new hotels under construction in certain areas, mainly along the coast, below Quinta Avenida’s level. There are discussions about whether they are good or bad, taking into account that our current installed capacity has a 50% occupancy rate, etc. Nonetheless, a hotel cannot be alien to its surrounding environment, that is to say, it is not possible to develop such an important hotel strip without thinking, for instance, of a new transportation system for that area. Has it really been considered that tourism needs a supporting logistic infrastructure? Has anyone thought of improving the condition of our streets, or the car rental service, which today is what tourists complain about the most?
Nor do I understand that there are two “ministries” of tourism; that is to say, at some point, Gaviota had little participation in that field, but nowadays it has more hotels than the Ministry of Tourism. I think we should consider a unification, because it is very difficult to manage a tourism industry that actually has two heads.
Ricardo Torres (Professor at the Center for Studies on the Cuban Economy of the University of Havana): I thank Temas and Último Jueves for choosing this topic, a very justified choice at this moment. The questions were excellent, and the answers of the participants very thorough, profound, and focused on the many different angles of the issue under discussion.
First, a brief reflection and then a question. The tourism industry, specifically the model concentrated on the international market, was already showing clear symptoms of exhaustion. It is safe to say that this model has changed in the last decade, especially since we opened it, with certain limitations, to the North American market, but the truth is that it was already showing signs of exhaustion before the pandemic. It is important to separate the pandemic from what we are observing. The sector has to make changes to the destinations and modalities that it offers within the country as well as in the proportions of those modalities in the offer. It is very important to make changes regarding both the actors that operate that model, who are still too concentrated on the state sector, and its relationship with the other fields of the economy. My question is whether the current tourism policy contemplates this need for transformation in the industry.
Merlin Rachel Puñales (Professor of the Sociology Department of the “Marta Abreu” Central University of Las Villas): I consider that one of the options that should prevail in the Cuban tourism system after the pandemic is agrotourism, understood as the conjunction of rural, agrarian and agricultural practices. What elements should be considered, then, to establish a theoretical, legal and referential framework for the consolidation of agrotourism with the inclusion of both self-employed workers and the state sector? What technologies could be applied in agrotourism, taking into account the environmental resilience of the communities where it could be implemented?
Yoel Karel Acosta (Professor of the School of Foreign Languages of the University of Havana): I have worked at the University of Havana for ten years, but before that, I worked as a tour guide for the Cubanacán travel agency and, for some time now, I have been thinking about practicing this activity on my own. As we know, the Cuban authorities recently stated that this would not be authorized because, and I quote, “unscrupulous elements have posed as tour guides in the past.” However, in my opinion and that of many colleagues that I have talked with, it would actually be very fruitful if self-employment were allowed, both for those who do it individually and for state employees, and for a number of reasons. Many clients wish to go on specialized tours that would be much better to provide on a private basis. Furthermore, it would also facilitate, for instance, a healthy competition with state-owned companies. On the other hand, there are or can be unscrupulous elements in any activity, not only in tour guiding. Were this activity be authorized, these individuals could be much easier to control.
Patricia Ramos (entrepreneur, Knocking on Cuba): I would like, if I may, to ask a question to Professor Antonio, whom I thank for the systematization he made in the last question regarding the changes that should take place in the tourism industry. I would like to know how feasible it would be to incorporate the whole MINTUR tourism system into the Gaviota structure, considering the current restrictions of the U.S. government on Cuba, even though we do not know whether things will change under the Biden Administration. What kind of reorganization could conceive the system as a whole, that is, in terms of policy, investment decisions, etc., both for MINTUR and Gaviota and for the private sector?
Consuelo Martín (Psychologist, University of Havana): I would like to ask two questions to the panelists: What relations can there be between tourism and international migrations? How have the effects of COVID-19 on tourism affected the Cuban families, inside and outside the country?
Amaury Escalona: It is very difficult to express in two minutes an opinion on everything I have heard, but it is encouraging to see that it is possible to create and theorize on Cuban tourism policy after many years of efforts, work and willingness. This is an opportunity to open a more straightforward face-to-face debate, but I am glad that this topic has been the object of so much thought among so many theoreticians whose opinions about the realities of tourism policy are likely to be more accurate and definitely different from those coming only from government sources. It is also important that scientists and intellectuals from other branches can also express their views. I hope that this will result in something interesting for the good of tourism in our country.
Rafael Betancourt (Economist and tourism researcher): Many will be surprised to learn that, after Canada, the second largest source of international visitors is the Cuban community abroad: 624,000 in 2019, i.e. 14% of the total number. The arrival of Cubans, 80% of whom reside in the United States, has been increasing every year since 2014, while the number of U.S. nationals dropped 22% in 2019, mainly due to the suspension of cruise ship travel by the Trump Administration. Many do not consider Cuban travelers as tourists, and yet they contribute more income to the country than any other group, as they spend money in the local economy, and leave cash and commodities to family and friends. They also stay in private homes and hotels and eat in restaurants as well as during the tours, not to mention their investments in private businesses. However, they are practically invisible to the MINTUR system, whose offers are not tailored to this sector, and which did not even refer to them as a market when they reopened international tourism last July. In spite of that, 43% of inbound travelers between July and November 2020 were Cubans based in foreign countries.
Nobody knows what tourism model will be deployed after the pandemic. Whichever one prevails, it will be hardly dependent on destination countries like Cuba. It will respond instead to the wishes and uncertainties of travelers, the operations and investments of tour operators and hotel chains, and the operational adjustments made by airlines and shipping lines, and all this will affect the costs of traveling to the Caribbean compared to other destinations. The tourism model that began to take shape in Cuba in the past two years resembles that of the rest of the Caribbean, with a predominance of sun and beach tourism and cruise travel. However, the growing number of U.S. travelers who came through the people-to-people program—and did not stay in all-inclusive hotels—and of Cubans who live abroad and come to visit family or as tourists, suggests that these trends will persist once the epidemic is finally under control and the country reopens its borders and the Biden Administration lifts some of the travel restrictions on its citizens.
To the excellent proposals made by Professor Antonio Díaz in the last question, I would add five more, for when conditions permit, specifically aimed at promoting travel to the island among Cubans living abroad:
1) Lower the cost of passports for emigrants and of its renovation every two years. It is estimated that this would encourage an additional 100,000 emigrants to apply for a passport, and if they travel to Cuba once a year, the increase in tourism revenues for Cuba would more than compensate for the reduction in consular revenues.
2) Recognize, on the part of Cuban government authorities, the tourist segment made up of emigrants and its importance from an economic point of view.
3) Acknowledge the importance of the locality as a fundamental setting for this tourist modality and promote the recovery and preservation of local cultural activities such as patron saint’s days, festivities, celebrations with absent natives, festivals, carnivals and other commemorations likely to be attractive to all tourists. The link with the local culture and traditions can be a special attraction for Cubans living abroad. These types of actions can contribute to maintain a steady flow of this segment and their descendants, but it requires promotion and assurances by cultural and tourist institutions and local governments.
4) Design offers suited to the specific interests and expectations of this segment. Nowadays the tourism entities do not pay them the necessary attention. The private sector has been the quickest to respond with offers of lodging, transportation, food and tailor-made excursions. A differentiated treatment could be considered, from the point of view of taxation, for house lessors who establish permanent service links for Cubans living abroad.
5) Offer medical services to emigrants visiting the country, many of whom have little or no health insurance coverage in their countries of residence.
Juan Triana (Economist, Professor at the Center for Studies on the Cuban Economy, University of Havana): I would like to comment on Rafael's question. His concern has to do with the development by private agents of a type or model of tourism in certain Cuban regions, to what extent we can conceive this as a real contribution to social and regional development, and whether there is a concept for this, and, if so, how environmentally friendly or even socially responsible can it be.
Historical circumstances made it impossible for those early experiences to succeed, among other reasons because they had no institutional framework to rely on. For example, we had no policy for regional development then as we do now. I think that it was an important experience to learn from and never forget. However, today we are in a different situation and have ground rules for regional development. My question is if the speakers believe that those rules dispel Rafael's concerns.
We must also put tourism into context. In a way, it summarizes the experience of the Cuban model and of the Cuban government and state with the private sector that they disregarded and virtually persecuted for a time. For another time they accepted it, unwillingly and reluctantly, and then accepted it as an ally, but with a great deal of prejudice. That is also the history of the relations between our socialist model, which we have been making or unmaking, and the private sector. Still, the truth is that today, without that sector, it would be very difficult to conceive tourism in Cuba, for many reasons ranging from economic to social. Many families in Cuba are dependent on the private tourism sector, and we should accept the fact that employment in the non-state sector is as important today in terms of numbers and proportions as that of the state business sector. The other thing is that private tourism obviously needs certain guidelines, strategies and policies in order to have a much greater impact on the overall economic life of the country.
Rafael Hernandez: Many thanks to all the participants for their enriching insights into a number of issues whose analysis has outreached the interventions of the panel. Now, we are going to give the floor following the same order as before.
Antonio Díaz Medina: As to Rafael's first question, little was actually said here about demand. In Cuba, this is quite different. Not only because it is the largest island in the Caribbean, which has more coastline and more and better beaches than any of its competitors, but also because of the eleven million Cubans and the Cuban culture’s diversity and richness and the influence that it even has on the whole Caribbean area and worldwide. For instance, some musicians, not only Cubans, but also foreigners, have told me that there are four categories of music in the world, and one of them is Cuban.
The Canadians come to Cuba for two reasons: the cold weather there in winter, and a no less important factor: the absence of American tourists on Cuban beaches. Whoever has seen what has been happening these days in Miami Beach can have an idea of what the Canadians mean by that. That is why you see so few of them in Cancun and so many, over one million, here in Cuba. The European market is a different story; they do not come looking just for sunlight and beaches, but also other experiences, much like a good part of the Latin American market. The Asian market seeks more culture and, in that regard, Cuba has some shortfalls compared to our surrounding competitors whose offers boast somewhat higher standards and a better quality-price ratio.
About Rafael's second question: Cuba has scarce resources because there is no diversity, not only in tourism, but also in the whole range of goods and services that we offer. There is no competition, but a centralism that stifles initiative and the possibilities of diversifying the country's offer, both for the domestic and for the foreign market, and tourism is also affected. Without this diversification, there is no competition, and without competition, there is no development, no unity and no struggle of opposites. We talk a lot about dialectical materialism and Marxism, but sometimes we forget the essential laws of dialectics and then we smother every possibility of development. We are in the hands of two monopolies, which do not even compete with each other, because it is clear that one of them is predominant. Hence my proposal to transfer to the civilian sector the entire tourism system run by Gaviota, which has nothing to do with the armed forces. This is extremely crucial for it to generate, and with even better reason, competition within the state sector, which is the most important sector of our economy. It seems to me that these are, at least to me, indisputable facts.
So it has been shown in the case of the gastronomy sector, to give you but one example. In Cuba, the system of private restaurants (called paladares after that famous Brazilian soap opera) really brought to light the poor quality of the state offer. It was not so bad and even had some very good places like the restaurant El Aljibe, but it had huge shortcomings in terms of diversity, quality, initiative and enhancement of Cuban cuisine, which is so important, above all, for this industry that we have come to call tourism.
I remember now an ESSO Standard Oil map of Cuba from the late 1950's, which as a child I loved to look over and fantasize about travelling to all those places. Two places were never missing from that kind of map, Viñales and Trinidad, always with a photo or a drawing. Both are historical destinations and always were a tourist attraction. I do not think that was only after 1959, nor that domestic tourism, fortunately, were quite developed in those times. I remember that the first economic slogan of the Revolution was, “Get to know Cuba first and other countries later”. But beyond that, I can say, from my modest experience as Havanatur manager, that the main complaint we received about both destinations had to do with their tremendous accommodation problems and that investments were made anywhere but there and very little was invested in their hotels. I do not believe that those two places had local tourism management mechanisms in place, although they outstand as localities because of their history. Nothing to do, for instance, with the keys or even with Varadero Beach, destinations of a practically national dimension which need therefore a national management to run them. Tourism cannot be “municipalized” (I think that is the word Rafael uses) in a mechanical manner. It seems to me that doing so would be as wrong as all-out centralization and keeping the municipality from participating in the decision-making process and having a say in everything done there, be it for tourism or anything else. What the country lacks is a clever combination of both things, considering all factors and giving right of way to what the locality and the country need most. Varadero Beach cannot be well thought-out only at local level, much less Trinidad, which is a world destination just like Viñales, but there must also be local vision, participation and control with enough power to hold back any crazy idea—like building a twenty-story hotel in Viñales or in the center of Trinidad—and to protect the communities.
Thank you for the compliment, Patricia. In the first place, what I say in relation to Gaviota has nothing to do with the measures of the United States, its opportunistic behavior or its use of blackmail. They are not tightening the blockade because of that or anything of the sort; their policy is to stifle the country economically. That is one of our serious problems: to look at the Cuban economy through the prism of the blockade, which is more than that, it is a brutal economic war, but one beyond our control. What we can eliminate is the so-called “internal blockade”. I raised the matter of Gaviota, as strongly as I could, when the Constitution was under discussion; and I said it at that time, above all else, because it seems to me that this distorts the essence of what these economic organizations subordinated to the armed forces should be. They should be doing everything possible to consolidate and provide the best living conditions to those who sacrifice for all of us and watch over the security and defense of the country, but using this at this stage to develop other sectors is a distortion that we must rectify.
The results are obvious in the figures of the investments that we made and keep making in tourism, even during a year of pandemic with zero tourism—with a view to the coming years, as tourism will require some time to recover, The real [room occupancy] numbers of the country are less than half of what they were. We had a year of 39-40% occupancy of our hotel rooms, and we have to resolve that. I think Triana was the one who recently brought up our problems, for example, in agriculture; we want to salvage agriculture, but then again, it has been years since the last important investment there, not even close to those in tourism.
Tania García: I take the floor again to state my views on some questions and comments. I think the question about what the tourists look for by coming to Cuba is interesting. A few years ago, in an excellent research by Professor Figueras, 60% of those surveyed said that one of the most important incentives to come to Cuba was precisely its identity and culture. In other words, something not exactly in tune with the products designed for the participation of tourists. Therefore, I believe that we should maintain these analyses and surveys on motivation, and from there, we can adjust programs and offers to meet the visitors’ needs.
To tell you the truth, I would never agree with maintaining centralization as a mechanism to solve financial shortages. It has not always proved to be a good antidote to our needs for resources or our shortages, especially because on many occasions it comes sprinkled with the discretionary powers of the decision-makers, which of course has squashed any chance of producing the results that we should expect. We must bear in mind that the transformations currently under way in our country, in our economic structure, under the new Constitution of the Republic, change the rules for decentralization as well as the bases on which previous decentralization exercises had taken place. Consequently, I believe that it is not yet possible to assess the results of the decentralization that is taking place at this moment, for they are going through a process of renovation and adjustment, and there are still no generalized studies. There may be successful results; I am thinking of the province of Cienfuegos, with excellent examples of success, and the province of Holguin has achieved good results in other fields too. However, it is still impossible to generalize performance, success or good practice indicators related to decentralization. In my personal opinion, the process is still immature.
I do wonder whether the regulations currently in force are consistent with what we expect to achieve, since they also respond to the circumstances of their conception and are quite in tune with known experience. The overall introspection that the country needs intends precisely to facilitate an adjustment of its regulations to the outcome and implications of those results.
I think Betancourt is proposing something interesting: we must prepare our tourist offer for different types of markets and develop different types of tourism. The tourism segment of Cubans living abroad has particular motivations; that much we have established. Some call it “nostalgic consumption”. We have a chance to provide this segment with specific offers, in the same way that it is valid to include vaccination and everything else in health tourism or develop nature tourism. The great lesson to be learned here is that we cannot continue to maintain only one type of tourism in the country.
As an economic sector, tourism is multisectoral. Because of the infrastructure and all the resources that it handles, it depends on many factors, both in the regions and in the nation as a whole. It would be a real complication, I think, for a model that is going towards decentralization and a boost in resources and regional capacities, to concentrate the development of an important part of its natural or created resources in centrally managed tourist enclaves. It seems to me that this would make the development process all the more conflictive. By saying this, I do not mean that it is not necessary to make adjustments, corrections, modifications and transformations on a permanent basis, because this is about embracing new forms of management, new mechanisms of operation and new cultures of production, and of course, it takes time to prepare, develop and come to terms with those cultures.
Much like the rest of the economic sectors affected by the whole process of decentralization, tourism will have to make changes to the same extent that these processes grow deep roots. What is certain is that we are facing a new project model, which is now in the process of introduction and compelled to transform the country’s economic culture to be able to meet the needs for change throughout not only the region but also the entire economic and social structure of the nation.
Yociel Marrero: I would like to answer and/or comment on some of the participants' questions. I will start with Merlin, from the Central University of Las Villas, who asked about agrotourism. Of course, we have been advocates of this tourist modality for a very long time, but the theoretical framework in Cuba is still as insufficient as the legal framework, although there are significant international references. This model has already been implemented in many countries, and there are already technologies and many attractions that can be created and generate interests in many communities and towns.
Regarding what Everleny says about hotels on a lower level than Quinta Avenida, the environmental and physical planning regulations clearly stipulate that nothing should be built “where the wave breaks and splashes a drop of seawater”. It is not right to build hotels below Quinta Avenida. Forestier said so in the early 20th century, but the practice continues, and of course, it will have be accompanied by a larger transportation and service infrastructure. It would be advisable, for the sake of avoiding bigger disasters, to build them in compliance with all the regulations that this requires.
As to what Ricardo Torres said, for me the implementation policy of this tourism is still not clear; it comes from the exhaustion he mentions, but I still do not know whether it reflects the necessary transformations.
About Triana's comment, the regional development policy is already written, but in my opinion, this regulation fails to address its relation with tourism, because it is quite general and it is not clear what elements could interact with the development of tourism in the regions and bring them direct profits, so we have to keep pushing for that purpose.
With regard to private or independent tourist guides, one format could be the cooperatives, so that what they could properly organize their offer and how they could penetrate the market.
Consuelo asked about tourism and international migration. Undoubtedly, there is a direct relationship, as Rafael Betancourt mentioned, between Cuba and those who emigrated, and now it is important that the offers we design come up to their expectations.
I believe that tourists often come looking for things they know about Cuba, but also for what is offered to them. MINTUR's campaign to promote tourism in Cuba, called “Authentic Cuba” and designed many years ago by a Canadian company, is widely known. So of course, many of the elements of that “authentic” Cuba they present have nothing to do with the authenticity of the Cuban or of our nation. As many colleagues here have said, we have to diversify those offers.
Trinidad and Viñales have some good lessons to teach, but some very bad ones, too. These have to do with the fact that those tourist developments did not take into account the loads that those regions allow, nor the experience in the use of those geographical or tourist areas. That is why we must learn from those experiences, which does not mean that we must give all local institutions and local factors greater decision-making power in the field of tourism, but regulate them according to the loads and the vocation to use those regions.
Professor Antonio Díaz says that there is no difference between the natural and the built environment. We have a serious disagreement in this respect. He gave the example of the “skyscrapers” made by ants, but the “built environment” that I talk about is the one made by man, a thinking being, and as a rule this creates a great deal of imbalance. Not in a “natural environment”, where any new, “built” element generates a new rearrangement of the loads in nature. There is a big difference between the two. This is plain to see in those anthills and in the buildings that we, human beings, build.
Patricia Ramos: First of all, I would like to thank the journal Temas for allowing me to share my experience and the panelists for the diversity of their answers. It is also a pleasure to meet in this setting with colleagues, professors, and tutors. My warm greetings to all of you.
When Rafael refers to the sun and beach model and whether that is what tourists are looking for, to a certain extent I think so, and it has to do with the fact that that is what the promotional campaign of Cuba has been based on. We can move towards a more diverse model, but it is a natural resource that we have and that we cannot ignore, it is attractive for a market that, in a way, has already been
conquered, namely Canada, the source of over one million visitors in 2019.
The second issuer of tourism to Cuba is the Cuban community in the United States, which accounted for more than one million travelers in 2019 and is looking for a different kind of tourism. Here we began to venture into a form of tourism based more on curiosity, on city tourism, but a not inconsiderable number of those Cubans also come to vacation and enjoy the hotel facilities, beaches and natural resources that their native country makes available to them.
I believe that another incentive has to do with our singularity. Cuba is a very peculiar and very curious country, very curious, and I think that may be the reason that prevails in their decision to choose Varadero Beach over Cancun or the Dominican Republic. People not only travel in search of basic leisure, recreation and rest, but also, to a significant extent, out of curiosity, as I think it happened with the latest wave of American arrivals. That is why I believe that the best way to bring international visitors to Cuba is through an offer based on that diversity.
The question about the lessons offered by the regions that managed their own tourism development is very interesting. The main lesson is that the private sector, both in tourism and in the rest of the branches of the economy, requires a governing body. This entity would regulate competition, oversee the markets and protect some of them, ensure balance in environmental and regional terms, protect labor, and offer social guarantees similar to those of the state sector—such as maternity leaves, some forms of assistance, trade unionism rights, etc. It is something that transcends the tourism industry, and has to do with the need to regulate the private sector, which goes beyond the definition of what activities can or cannot be carried out.
Ricardo Torres asked whether the current policy on tourism reflects its need for transformation. I think that we still lack a tourism policy like the one already designed for the regions; however, there are provisions in which I do not clearly see that transformation. In a recent speech, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, announced the adjustment to the country's investment plan, and he pointed out that it gives priority to the hydraulic sector and the completion of some works in the field of renewable energy, food, cement, and he mentioned tourism as well. This caught the attention of the academic community in connection with some elements that we have discussed here, such as the hotel occupancy rate of around 50%. New rooms for what? His statement becomes even more controversial in a pandemic context.
I believe I referred to the fact that there should not be a ban on the activity of tour guides. There are “unscrupulous” elements in all sectors. Those of us who at some point have enjoyed a tour to some part of the Island know that, unfortunately, the tour guides are not always competent, be they state-run or self-employed. I think that there may be alternative rules related to their qualification. In the United States, for example, private work requires, in some cases, a kind of technical exam to establish whether you can do your job well. In short, I think that we should explore variants other than prohibition.
Triana, I must admit that I did not review the regulatory framework to promote regional development before this panel, but I did check the one issued by the Ministry of Economy and Planning. What I gathered from it is that it does not go beyond the methodological and conceptual stage about the meaning of municipal development strategy, how it is prepared, its link with certain supporting agencies such as PADIT (UNDP’s Articulated Platform for Territorial Integral Development), and the competencies of the municipal and provincial administration councils. However, it did not give details on a sectorial level.
Rafael Hernández: Before bringing to a close this very interesting panel, I would like to take up a couple of points among the many that came up in the comments and interventions of the panelists. One has to do with the impact of the pandemic, and the other with our vision of tourism as part of an integral cultural perspective.
COVID-19 has indeed been a misfortune, but at the same time, it has opened a window of opportunity that I would illustrate with two examples. The first is that, at a given moment last year, the air travel lockdown gave a novel, outstanding opportunity to domestic tourism; not only to the Cubans living abroad who come as tourists, which is important, but also to those who live in Cuba, very often deemed unimportant to the statistics about tourism. To build a consistent tourism industry capable of integrating foreign and domestic demand into a single market and a single economy, not only because it is possible to stay at a hotel or because there is a single currency in circulation, it is necessary to design the offers and conceive the industry in a comprehensive manner.
The other worth-mentioning fact about COVID-19, also addressed in your comments, is that it has brought to the fore the importance of health, which together with education and culture would allow us to rethink the design of tourism and look at the national economy from a different perspective. Health, education and culture are not “budgeted sectors”, as some people insist, but the foundation of innovation and development; a new knowledge economy is one where tourism has been innovated through the organic incorporation of these three sectors. Not just the sunlight and the beaches, which are part of the Cuban reality but are not the ones having the greatest advantages, qualities and differences that Cuba boasts in comparison to other countries.
My second comment is about the issue of a culturally conceived tourism. We tend to blame tourism for the triviality of the cultural offer and for the commercialization and degradation of cultural products that often circulate among us. If only that were the cause. As Betancourt said, more Cubans have come from the United States, but an enormous number of Americans also came during the time they were able to do so. Culture is about the contemporary Cuban history and society as much as about the last sixty years. When we talk about it as a central element of an innovative concept of tourism, it is, of course, about measuring how high Cuba ranks not only in terms of the length of its beaches, which is fine, but also in terms of what contributes to make Cuba a different country. I asked an elderly American woman who came to Cuba during the short summer of the Obama Administration and attended one of my lectures why she had decided to come to Cuba right when there were restrictions on tourism in Cuba. I will always remember what she told me: “I wanted to visit Cuba while the Castros were still here”. This person did not sympathize with socialism, nor was she part of any Cuba solidarity movement. For her, “the Castros”, or Che Guevara, or the Revolution, were part of the contemporary Cuba that she wanted to see and that she believed might eventually fade away. Such is the attraction of the cultural and historical heritage that we have had for the last sixty years up to this day.
Thanks to you all, we have had a spectacular panel, and of course, thanks to our audience for their comments. I believe that they were neither redundant nor a waste of time, and they all addressed very significant issues which it is by no means possible to exhaust in this brief space. Nevertheless, they have shed light on some lines of reasoning that we will surely be able to continue developing in the future. A single Último Jueves panel is never enough for an in-depth analysis and discussion of many of these issues; it will barely make them visible. Thanks to all of you for allowing us, once again, to do this panel from a distance.
Traduccion: Jesús Bran
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