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14ymedio, Madrid, 6 September 2024 — Cuba is wrapping up its first tourism law, which should be approved in December 2025. The news broke this Thursday in Montevideo when the Observatory of Tourism Law of the Americas and the Caribbean was inaugurated, a venue agreed on last May in Varadero.
Juan José Álvarez, legal director of the ministry headed by Juan Carlos García Granda, represented Cuba at the inauguration of the Observatory, where the regime will expose – he said – “the values that support its tourism policy, based on peace and security.”
The first task of the new body is to perform a diagnosis of regional tourism legislation in order to subsequently develop proposals and carry out best practices. The basis is sustainability, accessibility and inclusiveness, according to the Cuban official, who did not expand on how this will be transferred to the national context, whose policy has been marked for decades by the exclusion and overexploitation of resources, including natural ones.
Experts in Law and Tourism from the University of Havana are working on the elaboration of the Cuban law, and the only clue about its content is that it will be “a moment of consolidation of what the country has done in tourism,” which is not exactly a good omen.
Despite the fact that the Island joined the Spanish Smart Tourist Destination program in 2023, neither of the cities that applied – Cayo Largo del Sur and Guardalavaca – have yet managed to advance in the designation. Cities that aspire to enter this category must demonstrate a high level in the five segments that are valued – governance, sustainability, accessibility, innovation and technology – to advance to the fifth and final stage. Montevideo, at level three, is among the cities in the world that are achieving this goal.
The Cuban tourism strategy, despite the repeated declarations of intentions, is still anchored in the past
The Cuban tourism strategy, despite the repeated declarations
