TRUMP POLICIES COULD AFFECT CUBA TRAVEL,
The wait in the line to exchange money at the Havana airport can stretch on for hours; reservations are a must at popular private Cuban restaurants; and tangerine and hot-pink vintage cars ferrying visitors crowd the streets around the most frequented tourist destinations.
Tourism on the island is definitely booming. Cuba welcomed a record 4 million visitors last year, a 13 percent increase over the previous year that also was a record. And during the recent holidays, the tourism stampede showed no signs of abating.
This year, with new cruise and airline service, could be another recordbreaker. Cuba is expecting an additional 100,000 visitors to the island in 2017, according to the Ministry of Tourism.
That is, unless President Trump throws a monkey wrench into U.S. visits to this new hot market.
He has warned that unless the United States gets a better deal in its developing relationship with Cuba and the Cuban government makes some political concessions, he might scrap the whole normalization process initiated by the United States and Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014.
That could jeopardize both cruise service from the United States and regularly scheduled flights by U.S. airlines, which resumed last year, as well as limit the number of Americans allowed to visit the island. Under President Obama, Americans who fall into 12 approved categories, such as those making family visits or on educational or people-topeople trips, may travel to the island. Their travel is supposed to be purposeful, rather than a vacation toasting themselves on Cuban beaches.
Those more liberal rules meant that by mid-2016, visits by Cubans living abroad — most of them residing in the U.S. — and by other U.S. travelers to Cuba had climbed to the second and third spots among all international visitors to the island, trailing only visitors from Canada. From January to June, nonfamily visits increased from 76,183 to 136,913, and that was before the first regularly scheduled flights from U.S. cities to Cuba in more than half a century began in August 2016.
Full-year breakouts aren’t yet available for 2016, but Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, said recently
that the combined total of visits by Cuban-Americans and other U.S. travelers last year was 614,433, a 34 percent increase.
Miami is the main hub for Cuba-bound travel from the United States, but other Florida cities, including Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Orlando, are also competing for Cuba-bound passengers.
U.S. tour operators such as InsightCuba are coming off their best year ever in arranging tours to the island. The New Rochelle, N.Y., company took nearly 5,000 people to Cuba in 2016. The company is proceeding full speed ahead with new products planned for this year, but its president, Tom Popper, says Trump’s election has raised questions marks.
During his recent Senate confirmation hearing, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said Obama’s executive orders that allowed the opening to Cuba would be among those slated for review by the Trump administration.
“Whatever line of business you’re in, it’s really hard to predict what will happen,” Popper said. “I don’t see an elimination or reversal of travel policies for Cuba, but I could foresee some changes. Eliminating it all would be very extreme.”
He said one reason for optimism is that “the new commander in chief has also been the hotelier in chief. I think he will balance that with his policies toward Cuba.”
Any change in Cuba travel policy — either beneficial or making it more difficult to travel — would probably take from six months to two years to impact visitors to the island, he said.
When President George W. Bush took office in January 2001, backed by a supportive Cuban diaspora, new, more restrictive travel and remittance policies for Cuba didn’t go into effect until mid-2004.
“I don’t think anyone really knows what (Trump) will or won’t do. We’ve been in this business for a long time and we’ve seen a lot of different administrations, so if there are changes, we will adapt and adjust to whatever the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) guidelines are and whatever we have to do to serve our customers best,” said Michael Zuccato, a co-founder of Cuba Travel Services.
California-based CTS, which used to offer extensive charter flights to Cuba, already is in the process of reinventing itself after the advent of regularly scheduled flights to Cuba. It only plans to offer seasonal and private charters and is focusing on vacation packages to Cuba as well as offering visa services and call-center support for four commercial airlines that are among those flying to Cuba.
Zuccato is keeping his fingers crossed. “He’s a business guy, so I’m hoping he’ll act in the best interest of American business,” he said.