The Canadian hotel chain Blue Diamond Resorts continues its aggressive expansion in Cuba and has just announced the addition of its luxury brands Sanctuary and Resonance in the tourist area of Santa Lucía, in the province of Camagüey.
The decision is surprising in a context of sustained contraction of tourism on the island and increasing opacity in public and foreign investments in this sector, which the regime continues to prioritize over basic services such as health.
The Club Amigo Caracol and Gran Club Santa Lucía facilities, now rebranded as part of the Resonance brand, have been renovated with new concepts of entertainment, à la carte dining, differentiated areas for adults, and enhanced comfort spaces.
Additionally, according to a report from Adelante, a small hotel with 35 rooms is being inaugurated, operated under the Sanctuary brand, exclusively for adults and featuring personalized services.
Investing in a crisis-stricken sector
According to official figures, international tourism in Cuba has drastically decreased over the past decade, and even the reopening after the pandemic has not managed to restore the dynamism seen before 2018.
In 2023, the island barely exceeded 2.4 million visitors, far from the official target of three million, and hotel occupancy was below 30%.
Despite these negative figures, the Cuban regime has once again prioritized investments in tourism over essential sectors. According to the regime's own official statistics, in 2023, 14 times more was invested in tourism than in public health, and in 2024 the gap continues to widen, with new tourism projects backed by foreign capital, primarily from Canada, and public resources that could have been allocated to hospitals, medicines, and primary care.
Blue Diamond: Sustained Expansion in Times of Crisis
Since its arrival in the country in 2011, Blue Diamond Resorts has become the second largest hotel operator in Cuba, only behind the Spanish group Meliá.
It currently manages 58 hotels and over 12,900 rooms distributed across locations such as Varadero, Havana, Cayo Santa María, Holguín, and Cayo Largo del Sur, the latter operated entirely under its brand following an agreement with the regime in 2022.
In 2024, the company inaugurated a new all-inclusive adults-only hotel in Cayo Cruz and signed agreements with the Cuban government to take over the management of at least three new hotels, in addition to renovations at existing facilities such as the Hotel Inglaterra in Havana.
The company has not made public the figures of its investments on the island, and the Cuban government has also not provided transparency regarding the amounts or contractual conditions.
A difficult bet to explain
Blue Diamond's interest in continuing to expand its footprint in Cuba raises questions both within and outside the tourism sector.
Unlike other European chains that have reduced their presence or renegotiated terms, the Canadian company seems to benefit from preferential conditions. In fact, it has received special permits to directly import food and products from abroad, in a country where even luxury hotels face chronic shortages.
These facilities could be explained by the close relationships between Blue Diamond and Cuban state entities controlled by the military conglomerate GAESA, the economic arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which dominates the tourism sector and nearly the entire dollarized economy of the island.
The joint management model allows the regime to maintain political and economic control of the sector while transferring operation and marketing to foreign chains that assume the operational risks.
Without transparency or clear social impact
The increasing prominence of companies like Blue Diamond occurs in an environment of total lack of transparency: the terms of the contracts, the state's share in the profits, and the allocation of the generated revenues are unknown.
There is also no public information about reinvestment in local communities or about the salaries of Cuban workers, who are hired through intermediary state agencies that retain most of the actual salary.
In Santa Lucía, provincial authorities celebrate the arrival of "luxury" brands as a progress for the development of the area, without questioning the tourism model that excludes the Cuban population, hinders their participation as direct economic actors, and reallocates state resources to the detriment of urgent social sectors.
Conclusion
The expansion of Blue Diamond Resorts in Camagüey is far from a sign of economic recovery or success of the Cuban tourism model; it reflects a business gamble that is hard to justify in terms of profitability and sustainability, except for the opaque benefits negotiated with a regime that prioritizes tourism as a political showcase, even at the expense of the health, education, and well-being of its population.
In a country where hospitals are overwhelmed and medications are scarce, the growth of luxury tourism only confirms the distorted priorities of an economic model that continues to prioritize foreign visitors over Cuban citizens.
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