Notes1 Despite the three years of negative growth that the Cuban tourism sector experienced at the start of the new century, it has seen positive growth (at an average of over 5.7% per annum) in the last five years. This recent performance has been accompanied by a drastic shift in the composition of tourist market […]
The Cuban Tourism Sector: A Note On Performance in the first Decade of the 21st Century
During the 1980s and the 1990s, the Cuban international tourism sector expanded at a rapid rate. Annual growth rates during the 1980s averaged 11.9% and the average annual rate of increase during the 1990s was approximately 18% (Espino 1992, 2000). The tourism sector soon became the star performer of the “special period.” At the turn […]
International Tourism in Cuba: An Update
After years of neglect, the Cuban government timidly started to promote international tourism in the mid- 1970s. By the mid-1980s, in the midst of an external sector crisis, the Cuban government embarked in a counter-reform, idealistic economic development program named the “Rectification of Errors and Negative Tendencies” (Mesa-Lago 2000). Along with the abolishment of free […]
Cuban Tourism: A Critique of the CEPAL 2000 Report
In 2000, the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) commonly refer to by its Spanish acronym, CEPAL, published a second edition of its study of the Cuban economy titled La Economía Cubana: Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa. The study was financed by the Swedish government and had as […]
Cuban Tourism During the Special Period
In 1990, in an attempt to deal with the devastating impact the collapse of the Soviet bloc inflicted on the Cuban economy, Cuban authorities announced the start of “the special period in time of peace,” an economic adjustment program. The following year the Fourth Communist Party Congress ratified the program and spelled out its main […]