... and hot-spots in Havana

Press, 4 July 1985, Page 20

... and hot-spots in Havana

By

GLIN McSEVENY,

of Reuter, in Havana

Cuba has unveiled ambitious plans for tourism to challenge sugar as the island’s main source of hard currency. “By 1990 we expect to bring in about 300 million pesos (dollars) from tourism through investing about 500 million pesos over the next five years,” Jorge Debasa, the head of the State firm, Cubatur, told a foreign travel agents’ convention here recently. Cuba’s earnings from the glutted world sugar market slumped to $250 million last year and diplomats say that Fidel Castro’s communist Government has decided that tourism offers the quickest solution to its dire lack -of hard currency. Officials expect tourism to earn Cuba more than $lOO million this year, up from 80 million dollars in 1984, and are confident the expansion plans will enable it to double its annual total of visitors to 400,000 by 1990. Today’s tourists come from Canada, Mexico, South America, and Western Europe, drawn by low prices, a tropical climate and the different atmosphere of a communist country where street crime is almost unknown. Before the 1959 revolution, up to 300,000 Americans a year flocked in to pack Cuba’s famed casinos, clubs, and brothels. Now the United States Government does not allow its citizens to come here, and the Cuban plan to expand tourism concentrates on the island’s more sedate modern charms. Eight 200-room hotels will be

built in the resort of Varadero, a favourite with visitors because of its long, white, sandy beaches and its nearby international airport. Shops, restaurants, and nightspots will be improved and new self-contained villas are planned along the narrow peninsula connecting the resort with the mainland east of the capital. Cayo Largo, an unspoilt coral island ideal for diving enthusiasts, is also earmarked for hotel development. The Cubans hope to turn it into a duty-free resort geared to foreign tourists who will be able to fly in directly when an existing runway is extended. The Cuban State Tourist Board has opened offices in most West European countries and charters fly here every week during the Northern winter. Contracts were signed at the tour operators’ convention with Argentine, Brazilian, Venezuelan, and Colombian travel agents, reflecting Cuba’s improved political ties with Latin America. “The beauty of tourism for Cuba is that it offers a quick source of dollars without having to build an entirely new industry,” one European diplomat said. Cuba plans to double its current tourist-class room capacity of 15,000 and has launched a campaign to woo locals away from spending their holidays at the seaside in order to make more space for the “dollar tourists,” as they are called here. Officials reject suggestions that resorts like Cayo Largo, out of

bounds for ordinary Cubans, and proliferating dollar-only stores violate Cuba’s self-proclaimed “people’s sovereignty,” but a few Cubans complain of being treated like second-class citizens in their own country. “It is almost like the prerevolutionary days to see youngsters pressing their noses against the windows of shops they cannot

enter,” said one middle-aged man, a firm supporter of the Castro Government. Some locals and diplomats say that Cuba’s freedom from social vices which are common in the West, much stressed by the authorities, may be at risk from an influx of wealthy tourists. Already, foreigners can hardly walk down some streets in Havana

without being pestered by youths offering black-market rates of five pesos to the United States dollar instead of the official rate of one to the dollar. Hotel staff are increasingly turning a blind eye to prostitutes who frequent the bars in search of an easy way to earn a pair of American jeans or a bottle of French perfume.