A video published this Tuesday on TikTok shows the inside of the Valentín Perla Blanca hotel in Cayo Santa María, completely empty and closed, with its enormous pools untouched but not a single guest in sight.
The author of the video, who infiltrated the facility guarded by a lone security guard living on-site, toured the lobby, the three pools, and the bungalow areas of the resort, described as having Spanish architecture and approximately 1,500 rooms.
"The Valentín Perla Blanca is a shame, a hotel that has one thousand five hundred rooms, like many hotels in Cayo Santa María that are closed," notes the author of the tour, in a testimony that reflects the collapse of the Cuban tourism sector, which in recent months has been leaving around 7,000 tourism workers unemployed.
The massive closure of hotel facilities in Cuba is partly due to the total shortage of aviation fuel that the Cuban government itself has acknowledged, which has halted flights and left many destinations on the island without tourists.
Chains such as Meliá, NH, and Iberostar have also closed facilities in various locations across the country, in a process that has affected both beach resorts and urban hotels.
The situation is particularly striking considering that Cuba invested 24.2 billion dollars in hotels between 2021 and 2023, a multimillion-dollar gamble that failed to reverse the sustained decline of the sector. According to recent data, the hotel occupancy rate did not exceed 21.5% in 2025, a figure that highlights the depth of the crisis.
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