American visitors
aren’t flying in droves to Cuba now. Tour operators: Please come back
BY
MIMI WHITEFIELD
January 30, 2018
HAVANA
When Tom Popper flew
to Havana over the weekend, his flight from New York's JFK airport was only 27
percent full. For the president of InsightCuba, a Cuba tour operator, that was
a sure sign that travel to the island is in trouble this winter.
Even though Cuba
reported a record of almost 4.7 million international visitors, including
nearly 620,000 Americans in 2017, in the last few months U.S. travel to the
island has cooled. [Cuban-American travel is excluded from those totals].
After the Obama
administration made it easier for Americans to travel to Cuba, releasing
decades of pent-up demand, it was hard to find an empty hotel room in Havana.
But in the past six
months, the Cuba travel industry has been hit by a triple whammy of adverse
events: U.S warnings and advisories against traveling to Cuba stemming from
mysterious health episodes affecting diplomats, a Category 5 hurricane that
battered tourism facilities, and confusing statements and restrictions from the
Trump administration on travel to the island.
Every time a new
headline pops up, it takes a toll, Popper said. The phones at his company go
silent.
So this week,
InsightCuba and a cross-section of those involved in Cuba travel organized an
outing in Havana with the singular purpose of showing that it is safe and legal
to travel to Cuba.
Despite the new rules
under Trump, it's not that complicated to visit Cuba either, said Popper, who
organized the CubaMediaDay on Monday in Havana.
Melia, the Spanish
hotel company, donated space at its Melia Cohiba hotel, for the Havana meeting.
It operates 27 hotels in Cuba with 12,570 rooms. By 2020, it hopes to be
running 38 hotels on the island with 15,548 rooms.
During December and
January, American guests at the Melia Cohiba decreased 25 percent but they
still represented the top market at the hotel, said Francisco Camps, deputy
director of Melia Cuba.
“We're here today to
change course,” said Terry Dale, president and chief executive of the U.S. Tour
Operators Association. While Cuba won accolades as top emerging market and
hottest market in 2015 and 2016, Dale said Cuba wasn't on either list in 2017
and it was viewed as the destination most at risk.
While most
international destinations are the subject of travel advisories because of
crime waves, terrorism or conditions of war, Cuba has always been considered a
relatively safe destination. At the Madrid International Tourism Fair this
month, Cuba received an excellence award for the “safest country in the world.”
But the latest
Department of State advisory, issued on Jan. 10, urges U.S. travelers to
“reconsider travel to Cuba due to health attacks directed at U.S. Embassy
Havana employees.”
Twenty-four employees have suffered symptoms ranging from hearing
loss, dizziness and fatigue to headaches, cognitive issues and visual problems.
Because the United States said Cuba failed to protect its diplomats while they
were on the island, all but a skeletal staff has been withdrawn from the
embassy in Havana and the U.S. expelled 17 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in
Washington.
Nineteen U.S.
travelers to Cuba also have reported similar symptoms to the State department,
but State wouldn't confirm where the incidents took place or whether U.S.
investigators had confirmed them.
Some of the diplomats
reported hearing a shrill buzzing sound, but not all. What's caused the
symptoms is still unknown. Because “we are unable to identify the source of the
attacks (at diplomatic residences and the Hotel Nacional and Capri hotel in
Cuba), we believe U.S. citizens also may be at risk,” the advisory said.
Cuban tourism
officials also joined the Havana media day, distributing guidebooks and
promotional materials with the slogan “la vives, la amas” (you live
it, you love it), and took American journalists on a tour of Old Havana and
Central Havana.
To allay fears that
travelers will find hurricane-battered hotels unable to receive guests, Jose
Bisbe York, president of Viajes Cuba, a tourism enterprise within the Ministry
of Tourism, said repairs had been completed on 40,000 hotel rooms and all major
tourism facilities were back on line by Nov. 1.
“Cuba is one of the safest destinations all
over the world,” said Bisbe. Nearly 40 percent of Cuba travelers are repeaters,
29 percent of travelers come with their families and 96 percent of travelers
say they would recommend Cuba as a destination, he said.
“You wouldn't
recommend a destination if there is some kind of risk,” Bisbe said. “We are a
very, very safe country.”
Marc Gaudet, a
tourist from Ottawa who had been sitting in a cafe, was on his ninth trip to
Cuba since 2007. “It's like every city in the world,” he said of Havana. “There
are good places and there are some bad places. But I would say this is about
the safest I've seen Havana in the past 10 years.”
He'd heard about the
health incidents, which also involved several Canadian diplomats, but was
skeptical. “Who in the world would want to attack Canadian diplomats?” he
asked. Canada continues to investigate but hasn't issued a travel advisory for
Cuba.
“I think someone is
trying to spoil the soup,” Gaudet said.
None of the news has
scared away Marie Kahn, a retiree from San Francisco, either.
She just figured she needed
to get to Cuba in a hurry. “I wanted to come now because I fear that maybe in a
year or two it will no longer be possible,” said Kahn who had been in Cuba for
the past 10 days and paused as her tour group crossed Old Havana's Plaza de
Armas.
“We began in Holguín
and then went east to Guantánamo and Santiago and then rural areas between
there and here, so we're all agog at how urbanized Havana is. It's really a
beautiful city. I would recommend it,” she said.
The landmark 439-room
Hotel Nacional, which has hosted world leaders, celebrities and the 1946
meeting of American mafia families who came together to divvy up business in
Havana, also was on the media day itinerary.
Now it also has the
infamy of being one of the hotels where the United States says some of the
attacks on diplomats occurred.
For the past five
years, the main market at the hotel, which sits on a high bluff overlooking the
sea, has been Americans. Of the 65,000 travelers who slept at the hotel last
year, more than 50 percent were Americans, said Antonio Martínez, the general
manager.
There were some
cancellations and bookings were down last month, he said, but the hotel still
hasn't closed the books on the last season.
Martínez said
bookings may be down around 20 percent, but he doesn't know whether to
attribute the drop to the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, being named by
the United States in connection with the health incidents, or other factors.
Asked what he thought
when he first heard the United States had named the hotel as the scene of some
of the “attacks,” he responded: “When you're 70 years old like I am, nothing.”
With 20 years at the Nacional, he said he's pretty much seen and heard it all.
“Look around. We
still have American guests here,” said Martínez. “Please send all of your
friends here and they will be well taken care of.”
Also speaking at the
meeting were airline and cruise line representatives.
Although it has
downsized planes on some routes and flew its last flight to Cienfuegos on Jan.
8, American Airlines remains “committed to the market,” said Martha Pantin,
AA's senior manager for corporate communications in Miami.
American still flies
63 flights a week to five Cuban cities and has applied to the Department of
Transportation for 17 additional weekly flight frequencies from Miami to
Havana, said Pantin,
Cruise ships continue
to arrive, too. On Monday, two were in port in Havana as a third sailed out to
sea.
When Trump announced
in Miami in June that he was shifting toward a new Cuba policy, he said he was
reversing all of President Barack Obama's Cuba policies.
He didn't, but that
led to more confusion on the part of American travelers. The rhetoric “created
a lot of misunderstanding,” said Lindsey Frank, a lawyer who spoke at the
event.
But the president did
make some important changes: requiring all people-to-people trips to be made as
part of groups and listing 180 Cuban hotels, tour companies and stores
controlled by the Cuban military as off limits for American travelers.
No American citizen,
firm, green-card holder or person otherwise under U.S. jurisdiction is allowed
to carry out any direct financial transaction with any entity on the list.
Americans can still
book at the restricted hotels as long as they book through a Cuban travel
agency (Havanatur, San Cristobal, Amistur) not on the list or a third-country
agency, said Frank. What is prohibited is direct transactions with entities on
the list.
Americans are
required to keep detailed records of their Cuba travels, including receipts,
for five years, and the administration has suggested there could be spot checks
for compliance when Americans arrive back home. But so far that doesn't seem to
have happened.
“I'm not aware of any
stepped-up enforcement, stepped up budget, or stepped-up personnel for
enforcement at OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control),” said Frank.
“Cuba,” he said,
“very much does remain a legal destination for U.S. travelers — even under
current OFAC regulations.”
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