Cuba Could Receive Two Million Tourists This Year]

Jayne Musumba wrote:
>
> Cuba could receive two million tourists this year
>
> August 10, 2000
>
> • Domestic market now supplies 61% of industry’s requirements
>
> BY ORLANDO GOMEZ BALADO (Granma International staff writer)
>
> WITH the arrival here on July 20 of the one millionth tourist,
> one month earlier than in the same period last year, the Ministry
> of Tourism, hotel chains and groups, airline companies, tour
> operators and travel agencies celebrated in Havana’s Nacional
> hotel what is already being predicted as a successful year for
> the industry, with a final figure close to or reaching the
> two-million mark.
>
> The first six months of this year saw a 7% increase in visitors
> compared to last year, which makes Cuba the fastest-growing
> tourist destination on an annual average (13.2% increase last
> year), as compared to the American continent as a whole (2.5% )
> and the Caribbean (2.4%). It achieved this despite U.S. hostility
> and the negative incidence of the so-called Millennium Bug at the
> end of ’99 and the start of 2000 on that figure of 1,603,000
> visitors.
>
> According to Deputy Tourism Minister Marta Maíz Gómez, that
> achievement is the result of ongoing efforts to maintain growth
> and improvements in all aspects of efficiency and service
> quality, whose protagonists are the sector’s 87,000-plus workers
> and the many others indirectly linked to it who also contribute
> to this vital branch of the national economy.
>
> Maíz Gómez added that it is particularly significant that the
> domestic market supplied 61% of the tourism industry’s
> requirements in the first three months of this year (compared to
> barely 18% five years ago) and that 38% of all the country’s
> hard-currency sales were to this dynamic and multiplying sector
> of the economy.
>
> The deputy minister also reminded participants at the celebration
> that the island’s tourism development policy also covers the
> leading role assigned to extra-hotel activities and services.
> Energies are being focussed on promoting and marketing new
> options: events-related and incentives tourism, nautical and
> ecological activities, and cultural and health tourism.
>
> A brand-new operation related to the exigencies of the Japanese
> market was also announced at the festivities: the inauguration in
> August of a direct Osaka-Havana flight. Also being initiated in
> the next few months is an experimental certification program
> monitoring the sustainability of hotel facilities and an
> evaluation of this indicator in relation to tourist destinations
> on the island.
>
> "We have grown, and will continue growing in an orderly and
> responsible way, without pressure or concessions, according to
> the guidelines contained in the national policy document on
> tourism development for the period 2001-2005," Maíz Gómez
> reaffirmed.
>
> SOURCE: Granma International
>
Received on Tue Aug 15 17:24:36 2000