The Minister of Tourism of Cuba, Juan Carlos García Granda, inaugurated this Thursday the 44th edition of the International Tourism Fair FITCuba 2026 amid the worst crisis in the sector in more than two decades, and emphasized that tourism "will increasingly be a driver of development and a bridge of peace and friendship between peoples."
The opening event, held virtually, also featured the presence of Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz and brought together more than 900 exhibitors from hotel chains, travel agencies, airlines, and international business partners, as reported by the official agency ACN.
The event will take place in a hybrid format: virtual negotiation sessions on May 7 and 8, and an in-person session on May 9 at the Josone Retiro Park in Varadero.
This is the first edition of FITCuba being held mostly virtually, an adaptation that reflects the energy and logistical limitations that paralyze the country.
García Granda's speech comes at a time when Cuban tourism is experiencing its worst performance since 2002: in 2025, the country received only 1.81 million visitors, a 17.8% decrease compared to 2024 and 62% below the historical record of 4.7 million reached in 2018.
The decline accelerated in the early months of 2026: only 298,057 visitors arrived in the first quarter, which is equivalent to 52% of the level during the same period of the previous year.
Hotel occupancy averaged only 18.9% in 2025, with more than eight out of every ten rooms unoccupied, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information, in a context where global tourism is experiencing a historic boom.
Instead of acknowledging the responsibility of 67 years of centralized state management in the collapse of the sector, García Granda attributed the difficulties to the U.S. embargo, which he described as a "brutal blockade" with "unilateral coercive measures and an economic, commercial, financial, and energy siege designed to stifle any possibility of development and well-being for our people."
As new measures to attempt to reactivate the sector, the minister announced the opening of tourism investment to Cuban residents abroad under any business modality, "with the same conditions and even with new facilities" as those offered to foreign investors.
It also highlighted the leasing of hotels to foreign chains—a modality whose first concrete result is the Iberostar Origin Laguna Azul hotel in Varadero, leased to the Spanish chain Iberostar since January 1, 2026, marking the first such instance in six decades of state control—and the new public-private partnerships with small and medium-sized enterprises, management contracts, and joint ventures.
García Granda implicitly acknowledged the seriousness of the situation by thanking the workers in the sector "for their daily feat of reaching the facilities to provide service in the face of the difficult conditions of everyday life."
The minister concluded his speech with a call to the partners who have distanced themselves: "We extend our hand to those who, for various reasons, have not been able to accompany us in recent times, with the hope that they can soon reintegrate and once again be part of this great family."
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