Minister García Granda assures that tourism will play its part in the Cuban economy
More than 70% of Cuban tourism is based in foreign investment, there are more than 19 international companies based here to attract tourism to Cuba
Posted by Sol de Cuba, 07/10/2025
Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda stated in an interview with the BBC that the Cuban government has halted the decline observed in the sector in 2024 and that the second quarter of 2025 will show better statistics.
“Conceptually, tourism remains the country’s economic locomotive,” the official told the British media outlet, although he pointed out that the travel industry in Cuba faces “obstacles none of our competitors do.”
“The intensity and the pressure from an economic war launched by the world’s main source of tourists, the United States, has prevented Cuban tourism from returning to pre-pandemic levels,” he emphasized.
This is a scenario influenced by “the harsher travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration,” the media outlet acknowledged on introducing the interview with the minister.
García Granda told the BBC reporter that the measures taken by Washington since President Trump’s first term in 2017 were specifically designed to harm tourism in the Caribbean archipelago.
“In Trump’s first term, they took 263 measures [against Cuba], the majority aimed at destroying Cuban tourism.” In particular, he points to the ban on US cruise lines docking in Cuban ports. “Without that, we could have counted on another one-million tourists [a year],” García Granda estimates.
A more draconian step came in January 2021, when the US re-listed Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT), the BBC notes, explaining that this classification has a domino effect: British and some European tourists who have visited Cuba after January 12, 2021, are no longer eligible for an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) to enter the US. Faced with that reality, many potential British visitors have been discouraged from visiting Cuba altogether.
“Thousands of British tourists must reach Cuba via Spain, via France, some even via Canada. Yet not through Miami. Explain to me why a Brit, completely free, can’t travel to Cuba via Miami?” García Granda asks.
When asked about the construction of new hotels in the country, and specifically about the Selection La Habana, managed by Iberostar in Havana, García Granda acknowledged the criticisms, while arguing that many Cubans, especially those who work there, appreciate the facility.
The minister emphasized that Cuba’s tourism strategy was not based on poor planning. “A gap during the Obama era… showed the need for more accommodation in Havana.” He also explained that the costs have not been borne solely by the state.
“More than 70% of Cuban tourism is based in foreign investment, there are more than 19 international companies based here to attract tourism to Cuba,” he stated.
“We are going to fill the hotels. We are going to get out of this economic situation and tourism will play its part,” the BBC report concludes, quoting the minister.
