Cuba relaunched cruise tourism with the arrival in Havana of the cruise ship "Thompson Dreams" on January 2nd.
The ship, with a capacity for about 2,000 cruise passengers, arrived in the Cuban capital on January 2nd, but also made stops at other smaller ports on the island, such as the Port of Antilla, about 750 kilometers east of Havana.
Seven points of the Cuban geography will serve as a stop for several cruise ships during the high season, which runs from November to April.
“The upcoming cruise season promises to be one of the most dynamic in recent years” (…) 13 ships have already requested the necessary permits to enter Cuban ports,” said Norberto Pérez, director of Aries Transportes SA, whose company manages cruise activity on the island.
These ships will arrive in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos and Punta Francés beach, on the Isle of Youth, and will also visit the eastern port of Antilla, in the province of Holguín; Ancón beaches, near the heritage city of Trinidad, and Rancho Luna, in the southern province of Cienfuegos.
The return of the Louis Cristal cruise ship is planned; it is the only one that has established its home port in Havana and will make a weekly circuit to the island with stops at various ports in the country.
There will also be other vessels, although some are very small such as the Panorama and the sailboat "Star Flyer", which will make tours along the south coast of this archipelago.
According to forecasts, this season will surpass the previous one, which reported the arrival of 12 cruise ships with 82 port calls.
Pérez asserted that the island has greater potential, since, in his opinion, the facilities have been underutilized since 1995, when conditions were created for the development of this modality, however, it has not been possible to exploit more than 10 percent of the infrastructure's capacity so far.
According to experts, the island's current port infrastructure allows the entry of 21 cruise ships per week through the terminals in Havana, the provinces of Santiago de Cuba (southeast) and Cienfuegos (center) and on the Isle of Youth (southwest).
“If we take into account the facilities we have and the operations that can be carried out with an average ship occupancy of 1,090 passengers, we can say that we would be moving 190,800 passengers and 161,200 crew members in a year,” he specified.
The year with the highest occupancy in operations was 2005, during which 122 stops were made with 102,440 passengers.
Cruise tourism in Cuba fell 89 percent from 2005 to 2007, dropping from 102,440 visitors to 11,000 after the purchase by the American company Royal Caribbean of the Spanish company Pullmantur, owner of the ship "Holiday Dream" that frequently traveled to the island and left more than 15 million dollars in revenue.
Operations resumed in 2009 after a pause, and they made about 20 stops with some 6,368 passengers.
Norberto Pérez stated that due to the United States blockade, in effect since 1962, Cuba has lost more than $149 million since 2013, as the measure prohibits US cruise companies from organizing trips to the island and establishes that ships from other countries that dock in Cuban ports cannot enter the northern country for six months.
Pérez explained that calculations were made based on data from the Caribbean and Florida Cruise Association, which indicates that each tourist traveling on a cruise generally spends about $95.92 at each stop.
“That means that if we have that expense, and in addition the crew spends about $96.98 on purchases of products and services, and the expenses of cruise ship operations at the terminals are estimated at about $20, we are talking about more than $149 million annually,” Pérez explained.
