CarribeanNewsNow- Cuba’s recent announcement to triple its cruise ship berths at the port on the edge of Old Havana by 2024 may seem surprising coming just months after President Donald Trump moved to clamp down on Americans’ travel to Cuba. But it shouldn’t, says Kislaya Prasad, research professor and academic director of the Center for Global Business at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
The port expansion actually reflects the flavor of the restrictions U.S. travelers face since the crackdown. US travelers are banned from visiting Cuba’s government-backed hotels and restaurants – and that makes cruise liners, with their built-in lodging, restaurants and educated tour guides, the perfect way to explore the long-off-limits island nation.
“The cruise ships have customized excursions that meet the criteria for ‘educational’ US travel to Cuba,” Prasad says.
“Somebody who is going on a cruise can just have the company organize the paperwork, and they can just go to Havana and feel secure about not flouting any laws about which hotels they are allowed to stay in or what restaurants they are allowed to eat in,” Prasad says. “Those kinds of risks are mitigated.”
The number of cruise ships making port calls in Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba has surged in the past two years, now topping more than 650 sailings, much of them boarded by Americans. That’s poised to increase yet again, with Cuba recently signing a deal with the world’s largest independent cruise port operator to increase capacity at the terminal in Havana.
Even without US travelers in Cuba, there would still be potential for expansion, given the number of visitors each year who travel from Canada and Western Europe.
Nonetheless, small entrepreneurs in Cuba – owners and employees of the paladares and casa particulares – across the budding Cuban hospitality sector are feeling pinched by the revised US policies. And the loss of high-spending US customers may be a result of many of the US visitors coming off cruise ships and making a short visit restricted to Old Havana, Prasad says.
“Sadly, this trend is the opposite of what was hoped for when travel restrictions to Cuba were first lifted during the Obama administration,” he says. “The hope was that a rising middle class would be emboldened to demand greater freedoms, and this eventually lead to a more open society.”
Even when Trump rolled back some of the policies of the previous administration, Prasad says, the intention was to target establishments owned by the Cuban Army – not the private sector. The new policies, Prasad says, by many accounts are hitting the private sector hardest, while leaving the state sector largely insulated.
