From our Bureau of Absolute Socialist Insanity with some assistance from our Russification of Kuba Bureau
At this point, one needs to assume that the oligarchs of Castro, Inc. are gripped by a rare mental disorder. Let’s call it hotelomania. Despite the obvious collapse of their tourist industry, and despite the ever-worsening collapse of their infrastructure, Castro, Inc. not only continues to build more hotels, but to seek foreign investment in the building of even more hotels in the near future.
Yeah. Castro, Inc. has a fever, and the only prescription is MORE HOTELS ! Let’s see if the Russian investors currently being woed by Castro, Inc. are foolish enough to pour millions rubles into this unprofitable bottomless pit, or if Czar Vlad the Invader allows it to happen.
Loosely translated from Marti Noticias
Cuba will not exceed the 200,000 travelers it expected to receive from Russia this year, but it is making progress in negotiations with companies from the allied country for the construction and management of hotels, according to statements made by Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda to a Russian state media outlet.
“Tourism in Cuba has experience in the development of joint ventures, particularly in the field of foreign investment. We are betting a lot on Russia also participating in this,” the Cuban minister told a correspondent from the TASS news agency.
García Granda expressed certainty that the negotiations with Russia will bear fruit. “I think we are very close to the appearance in Cuba of the first hotels built by Russian businessmen. In addition, several existing hotels could be transferred to the management of Russian travel companies,” he said.
The Minister of Tourism said that “negotiations are underway in these areas,” and that there are already projects in the study phase that are close to beginning their implementation, but he did not go further. “I will not give details, let’s wait until it materializes.”
According to García Granda, the negotiations include “expanding the possibilities of air communication, which today is a factor that limits the visit of Russian tourists to Cuba.”
The Russian airline Rossiya restarted its direct flights to Havana on October 13. The minister noted that this is a “positive step,” but ruled out that the goal announced by Cuba of exceeding 200 thousand tourists from Russia in 2024 will be reached this year. “Unfortunately, this objective remains until 2025,” he concluded.
The island suffered another fall in the sector this year, receiving only 1,719,145 international tourists until September 2024, for a decrease of 1,719,145 5.2% compared to the same period in 2023, according to figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).
Amid an unprecedented energy crisis and affected by several natural disasters, the island will not even reach the revised goal of reaching 2.7 million tourists in 2024, from the 3.2 million initially planned.
According to ONEI data, Canada remained the main source of travelers to the island, with 695,567 tourists until September, followed by Russia, with 141,615; the United States, with 110,538; Spain, with 50,498; Mexico, with 48,112, and Germany, with 47,324.
Cuba and Russia strengthened their strategic alliance in the last two years, following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, which the island’s regime was one of the first to support. In early September, Russia announced that it plans to grant new credit lines to Cuba while continuing to strengthen cooperation in security, special services and law enforcement departments.
“Cuba is one of Russia’s closest allies in Latin America. We have long-standing and solid relations, tested by time, dating back to Soviet times,” said Cuba’s Secretary of State for Security, Sergei Shoigu, in making the announcement.
It seems crazy, but Castro, Inc. is only interested what it thinks will keep it up and running, and the state of the country for ordinary Cubans is beside the point–that only concerns the regime as a possible threat, since it could lead to a popular uprising. The dictatorship’s solution, however, is not to improve the situation significantly for average Cubans, but to ramp up repression and fear to keep the slaves under control.
It’s absolute insanity. Most people visit foreign cities in order to go sightseeing [ex. Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Buckingham Palace, etc…] they go to see museums [i.e. Louvre], nightclubs, restaurants, shopping, etc… I know that some go to foreign countries in order to have sex [lamentably that’s a big part of Cuban tourism], but how can a city with so many hotels surrounded by squalor and cheap, rinky dink museums, gov’t owned restaurants, a few paladares, and government owned stores expect to service? I would get so bored so quickly. I don’t want to see a city where the only buildings that aren’t falling about are hotels and where there are only a handful of tourist sights.
Ironic that pre-59, Havana was derided as a tinsel town, when that’s precisely what it has become today tenfold. By the way, someone needs to tell the oligarchs that run Cuba about the law of demand and supply.
I keep encouraging Elon Musk on X to make an investment in Cuba. I told him the government there only cares about themselves, their own comfort and making money. If he offers them enough to leave the country in his hands, he could make it perhaps with other investors into one of the sweetest resort island countries in the world. Almost like starting from scratch.