After suffering a power outage, Cuba's tourism industry is now preparing to welcome Trump

As winter nights approach across North America, Canadian “snowbirds” — citizens who flee freezing temperatures for a sunnier climate each year — plan their annual trips to Florida or the Caribbean.

Traditionally, Cuba is very popular with Canadians, who are drawn to the pure white sands of beach resorts like Varadero.

They fill the void left by Americans who are concerned about the travel restrictions imposed on them as they continue US economic embargo It is the largest island in the Caribbean.

The numbers show that Nearly a million Canadian tourists visited Cuba last year, which is the number one country of origin for visitors by a slight margin.

As such, the recent decision by Canadian tour operator, Sunwing Vacations Group – one of Cuba's leading travel partners – to remove 26 hotels from its Cuban portfolio represents a blow to the island's struggling tourism industry.

Sunwing made this decision after Cuba suffered a nationwide power outage for four days at the end of October, due to the failure of electricity delivery in the country. Old energy infrastructure.

This was followed by another nationwide power outage last month, when Hurricane Rafael hit the island, exacerbating an already severe electricity crisis.

Then there was a third nationwide power outage on Wednesday, December 4, after Cuba's largest power plant broke down.

“Cuba has seen some volatility in the past few weeks, and that could shake consumer confidence,” said Samantha Taylor, chief marketing officer at Sunwing. L said Travel website Pax News last month.

“There are great places you can go in Cuba,” she stressed, adding that she was keen to stress that the company would not withdraw from Cuba completely. “But we also realize that if customers feel a little uncomfortable, we have to give them options.”

Specifically, this involved putting together a list of what they called “hidden gems” – alternative vacation destinations in the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Colombia.

The consequences for Cuba are clear.

Since tourism is now the island's main economic driver, and the main source of foreign currency earnings after remittances, the fact that a major tourism company is directing its customers to the shores of other countries due to dilapidated energy infrastructure is a real concern.

“Our message to Canadians is that tourism is a priority for the economy,” Lesnar Gomez, director of the Cuban Tourism Board in Toronto, said in a statement. “The Ministry of Tourism is preparing for the winter season to provide better services, uninterrupted supplies, a better airport experience and more new car rentals.”

While the Cuban tourism agency tries to allay fears about the extent of the power outages, few can deny that these months have been extremely difficult on the island. Hurricane Rafael was just the latest storm to hit Cuba in a frenetic Atlantic hurricane season, where powerful and frequent storms have become the new normal.

Naturally, extreme weather is a problem throughout the Caribbean. But for Cuba, there are other complications.

Donald Trump's re-election to the White House and his choice of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, would make life more complicated for Cubans than it already is.

“This is perhaps the most difficult moment of the Cuban Revolution,” says former Cuban diplomat Jesús Arbollia. “Unfortunately, I see absolutely nothing on the horizon that allows for an optimistic vision for the future of relations between the United States and Cuba.

“Donald Trump has handed over US policy toward Cuba to those sectors of the Cuban-American right that have subsisted primarily on anti-Castro policies since their inception.”

Marco Rubio, currently a U.S. senator from Florida, is a leading voice among them, Mr. Arboglia adds. He is a Cuban American who has long opposed the communist government in Havana.

His parents were Cuban and moved to the United States in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro seized power, but his grandfather fled the Castro-led conversion to communism on the island.

“People are terrified by the idea of ​​another Donald Trump presidency. He raises a real problem,” echoes Cuban political commentator and editor-in-chief of Temas magazine, Rafael Hernández.

He says current US policy toward Cuba is “somewhat schizophrenic.”

“On the one hand, the State Department facilitates support for the private sector, and (pushes) for economic changes in Cuba. But on the other hand, Congress and the Senate appear to have frozen any progress on these reforms.

However, future Secretary of State Rubio is expected to unify US policy toward Cuba around one idea — imposing maximum pressure on the island by tightening already harsh sanctions.

Cubans fear this could lead to the suspension of commercial flights to Cuba, or even the closure of the US Embassy in Havana, which officially reopened in 2015 after decades of frosty relations.

If implemented, such steps would be deliberately designed to further damage Cuba's faltering tourism trade, the goal of hitting the communist-run country when it collapses. The number of tourists to Cuba has nearly halved since it reached nearly five million visitors during the Obama-era detente with Cuba.

Between 2015 and 2017, American visitors flocked to the island under looser travel restrictions, eager to experience a country they had long been deprived of. Around the same time, the Cuban government embarked on the process of building major hotels, confident that demand would remain strong over the next decade.

However, Cuban tourism has been dealt a double blow from which it has never fully recovered. First, the Trump administration rolled back President Obama's engagement policies, then the COVID-19 pandemic sent the industry into free fall.

With many of these hotels now recording much lower occupancy rates than originally expected, and real difficulties in delivering the five-star customer experience as advertised amid power outages and lack of services, some are questioning the strategy of putting so many eggs in the tourism basket to begin with. place.

“Why has Cuba invested an average of 38% (of government funds) over the past decade in hotels and infrastructure related to international tourism, but only 8 to 9% in energy infrastructure?” he asked. asks economist Ricardo Torres of American University in Washington, D.C. “This doesn’t make sense. Hotels run on electricity.”

Even with all the current challenges, most visitors agree that Cuba remains a unique travel experience. The clichés – classic cars, cigars and mojitos – still attract many, while others prefer to travel to the island to enjoy its history, culture and music.

However, as tour operator Sunwings' decision to back down shows, some tourists are finding it difficult to appreciate Cuba during its energy crisis, especially one that is about to be exacerbated by a hostile administration — and Secretary of State — in Washington.