Cuba sees fewer visits from U.S. travelers
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.
Despite the new rules under President Donald Trump, it’s not that complicated to visit Cuba either, said Popper, attending an event organized for media members.
During December and January, American guests at the Melia Cohiba hotel in Havana decreased 25 percent, but they still represented the top market at the hotel, said Francisco Camps, deputy director of Melia Cuba.
The latest U.S. Department of State advisory, issued 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States said Cuba failed to protect its diplomats while they were on the island, all but a skeletal staff has been withdrawn from the embassy in Havana, and the U.S. expelled 17 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C.
Nineteen U.S. travelers to Cuba also have reported similar symptoms to the Department of State, but the department 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.
When Trump announced in June in Miami 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.