The Cuban YouTuber Marlon Hernández (@soy_marlonhernandez) showed the terrible neglect suffered by the famous Neptuno and Tritón hotels in Havana.
In the early 1970s, architect Vicente Lanz and his team designed the Hotel Tritón in Havana, a 22-story building with 240 rooms. This was one of the first high-rise hotels built in the city after 1959. Shortly thereafter, the Neptuno tower was added, forming the Neptuno-Tritón complex.
The towers are located in the Playa municipality, right on the beachfront, offering stunning views of the sea and the city. However, the regime left them abandoned and allowed their gradual destruction.
This hotel complex had already shown significant signs of deterioration since 2016. The government, unable to provide the extensive repairs needed due to its proximity to the sea and its years of construction, decided to leave the property to operate with domestic tourism.
A night of accommodation a few years ago equated to more than double the average salary of Cubans. The images of Marlon in September 2024 are evidence that these beautiful buildings no longer provide the good service that once defined them.
The state's neglect is once again mockingly revealed before the faces of Cubans.
The regime invests 14 times more in tourism than in public health and social assistance. Despite this, its strategy for years has not been to restore the hotels with great tradition in Cuba, which are part of the country's architectural heritage, but to create new facilities from scratch at a very high cost.
This strategy does not translate into the development of tourism. Official statistics indicate that fewer and fewer people are traveling to Cuba.
The National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) recorded 1,905,644 travelers from January to July 2024. These numbers fall short of those counted in the same period last year. In the first seven months of this year, 15,263 fewer travelers arrived in the country.
In the midst of the current economic, health, political, and social crisis, the Gaviota Group, led by the military in Cuba, announced the opening of new hotels, primarily in Havana and Holguín, working with 16 foreign chains that manage 80% of its rooms.
Hotels such as Metrópolis, Muthu Tower, and K23 will be inaugurated, the latter generating outrage among many citizens who do not understand the need for that million-dollar investment in another hotel that will be empty in Havana when houses, schools, and hospitals are destroyed.
What do you think?
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