Photo: TTC

Around 64712 Tourists Official sources said that foreigners visited Cuba in the first four months of the year, only 6% of the 983,099 who visited Cuba in the same period in 2020.

The number 918,387 visitors represent fewer visitors compared to a similar period last year, the Cuban National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI) said on its website.

The report confirmed that more than half of the tourists who have arrived on the island so far this year (33592) are Russians, followed by Cubans living abroad, Germans, Spaniards and Canadians.

The Caribbean country currently receives four flights a week from Russia, so there are more than 2,400 tourists from that country every day of the week, he told the agency recently. Yves Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos Garcia, who in March attended the MITT 2021 Tourism Fair in Moscow.

Garcia pointed out that every traveler undergoes a PCR test as soon as he enters Cuban territory, where – he stressed – there are many “safe” destinations for visitors, such as Varadero, Cayo Coco, Cayo Santa Maria and Cayo Largo.

The current health protocol stipulates that travelers entering Cuba must take a negative PCR test that is performed 72 hours before arrival, to which a second test is added at the border when entering the country.

Then, tourists must quarantine in a hotel until they are tested negative in a third PCR test that is carried out five days after arrival, while Cubans can choose between going to a paid hotel or a free state isolation center, where they also remain until the result of the third test is known. .

Cuba, which has reported more than 1,000 daily cases from Covid-19In April 2020, commercial flights and charter aircraft were suspended to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

In October of that year, airports reopened but infections rose dramatically, with many attributing them to failing to comply with isolation protocols for travelers.

For this reason, flights from the United States, Mexico, Panama, the Bahamas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Colombia have been reduced to a minimum since January.

Cuba receives fewer than a thousand travelers a day on average due to the epidemic

Before the outbreak of the epidemic, tourism was for Cuba the second official source of income from foreign exchange – after only selling professional services abroad – and it contributed about 10% of GDP.

The country aspires to receive nearly 4.5 million international visitors in 2020 and reverses the 9.3% decline in 2019, when 4.2 million tourists traveled to the country, which is 436,352 fewer tourists than in 2018, according to official data.

The forecast for this year ranges between 2 and 2.2 million tourists, although the authorities themselves have realized that it may be difficult to comply with the estimates, given the behavior of these first months of the year, and the complex national and international scenario due to Covid-19.

(Information from EFE / OnCuba)