Cuban government reports 1.6 million tourists in the first half of 2024.

Cuba received a total of 1,680,485 travelers during the first half of this year, according to official figures.

It is an increase of 101.1%, that is, about 18,845 more compared to the same period last year, specified a report from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).

Similarly, the Cuban government entity differentiates between international tourists who arrived in the country, which reached the figure of 1,309,836 people, representing 100.9%, that is, 11,284 more than in the same period of the previous year.

Canada (577,549), Russia (112,721), the United States (83,186), and Germany (36,343) are the countries that contributed the highest number of travelers, while 155,320 Cubans living abroad visited the island.

March was the month with the highest number of international tourists arriving (281,139), while June (134,948) had the lowest.

Based on this data, the prominent economist Pedro Monreal indicated that “with half of the year having passed, the official data on visitors received does not seem promising, with a dynamic very similar to that of the same period in 2023 and very distant from the data from the last normal years (2017-2019),” referring to the pre-pandemic stage of Covid-19.

"The accumulated figure from January to May was slightly lower for Canada (1st sender) and 11.9% lower for the Cuban community (2nd sender) compared to January-May 2023, which was offset by the notable increase of 66.7% in visitors from Russia (3rd sender)," he pointed out.

Monreal himself had detected falsified data from the Cuban regime in the number of tourists presented until May, where they claimed an arrival of 1.8 million visitors.

According to Monreal, "it is known that the total from January to May was 117,488 visitors, and it is not possible for the total from January to June to be 1.8 million" because "to accumulate 1.8 million visitors from January to June, 625,112 visitors would have had to arrive in June, but the maximum number of visitors received in a June in recent years was that recorded in June 2018 (342,195)."

Last April, the Ministry of Tourism celebrated the arrival of one million foreign visitors to the island.

"Today, April 26, just a few days before the start of our International Tourism Fair FitCuba2024, Cuba welcomes the number of one million international visitors," said Juan Carlos García Granda, head of the sector, from his profile on X.

A piece of news that seemed encouraging amid growing negative opinions towards tourism on the island, wrapped in a streak of poor ratings for service, facilities, and food supply.

In 2023, with nearly 3.2 million visitors (including nationals), Cuba did not manage to surpass the mark of 3 million foreign tourists, a target that had been set since the beginning of the year.