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Tourism in Cuba is going through one of its most critical moments in years amid the severe energy crisis and fuel shortages affecting the country, a situation that is causing flight cancellations, service interruptions, and a significant decline in visitor arrivals.
The newspaper The New York Times reported that the lack of fuel, exacerbated by measures from President Donald Trump's administration to restrict oil supply to the island, is hitting one of the main sectors that generate foreign currency for the Cuban government hard.
According to the report, the energy crisis has begun to paralyze the tourism industry.
In various destinations across the country, excursions have been canceled, fuel is being rationed, and some hotels are facing power outages that require tourists to be concentrated in certain areas to ensure electricity availability.
The situation has also affected air transport. Airlines from Canada and Russia have suspended flights to Cuba due to a lack of aviation fuel and instability in the electrical system, which forced the deployment of empty airplanes to evacuate thousands of tourists who were vacationing on the island.
The newspaper notes that the Cuban tourism industry had already been weakened since the pandemic and due to the sustained drop in the number of visitors in recent years.
In 2024, Cuba received around 1.8 million international tourists, far from the 4.7 million recorded in 2018.
Canada remains the main tourist market for the country, accounting for nearly 40 percent of foreign visitors. However, even this flow has started to decline due to blackouts, shortages of services, and travel advisories issued by some governments.
The report also notes that the Cuban government has invested billions of dollars in hotel construction over the past decade, many of them managed by the military conglomerate GAESA, despite hotel occupancy hovering at just around 20 percent.
The combination of the energy crisis, deterioration of services, and reduction in tourism threatens to further deepen the economic crisis facing the island.
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