Cancun or Cuba?

Please Rate Vote 1 Vote 2 Vote 3 Vote 4 Vote 5

CANCUM

MERIDA. - When Cuban Revolution and the trade embargo drastically put a stop to the stream of American visitors to the Caribbean Island, Mexico was far from being a touristic power.

It was not until 1965 when Acapulco’s current airport was open. For two decades this was the second busiest airport in Mexico – Mexico City’s being the first one- until it was superseded by Cancun’s airport.

Mexican Caribbean cost was developed with great vision as a tourist centre. In 1973, Cancun’s airport was open; its terminal consisted of just one palm roof; but commercial flights were already landing by March, 1975. Nowadays, Cancun’s airport has three terminals, and a fourth one has already been projected.

Sixty eight airlines offering 119 national and international flights are currently operating at Cancun’s airport. More than 17 million passengers went through CUN facilities in 2014.

In about four decades, Cancun and Riviera Maya have become strong as tourist destinations. According to Quintana Roo’s government statistics, both places, together, welcome about nine million visitors during 2013.

The big question, are the Mexican Caribbean region and the Yucatan Peninsula, in general, ready to face up to what could become a strong competition with Cuba?
This past Thursday, US government announced to lifting restrictions for American citizens to visit the island.

Cuba is the only country in the world which Americans are not allowed to visit. Not even North Korea and Iran are under that category.

Up to 1999, the only way and American could travel to the island was without State Department knowledge, via third countries - like Mexico, Canada and Bahamas - and by making sure their passport were not stamped by Cuban authorities; otherwise they were exposed to paying significant fines.

President Bill Clinton created a list of exceptions for traveling to Cuba in 1999. Americans could travel for journalism, sports and religious and humanitarian reasons. With this exceptions, two hundred thousand Americans travel to Cuba in the year 2003.

George W. Bush’s government however, suspended the issuing of permits for traveling to Cuba, and so the numbers went down to only fifty thousand Americans visiting Cuba in the year 2004.

The number went up again, when Washington authorized the Cubans in exile to visit the island.

In 2011, Barack Obama’s government lifted the restrictions and resumes the issuing of permits. Last year about six hundred fifty thousand Americans went to Cuba.

The measures announced last week, will eliminate the need to obtain a permit to travel. Even if technically speaking, it is still forbidden to make tourism, the American people who wish to visit the island, will only have to declare that the purpose of their trip falls under one of the existent exceptions.

Cuba currently gets about three million tourists a year, out of whom one million are Canadian and the rest are European, Mexicans, Argentineans and of other origins.

The main problem the island is confronting, due to the increment of the number of visitors, is its infrastructure. Cuba has a good number of first class hotels, but not enough rooms to accommodate the amount of tourist that will be now arriving from United States.

Rafael Romeu, former executive of the International Monetary Fund, has been, for the last seven years, studying the changing nature of tourism in the Caribbean. In 2011 he published a document in which he calculated that a lifting of the travel band would mean the arrival of between 3.5 and 5 million American tourist a year.

“We are not there yet”, the now president of DevTech Systems, a Consultant firm dedicated to development topics, told me last Friday

Romeu does not believe that measures announced last week can be translated as an immediate stampede of Americans towards Cuba, although he is sure that the current relationship among both countries is a reflection of mutual recognition that the embargo, or blockade, as the Cuban call it, is a failure, and the best thing is to make it disappear.

To that purpose, he stated, not only restrictions have to be lifted from the US side, but also it is necessary to end the less competitive management of the tourist industry in particular, and of the economy in general, which has been imposed by Cuban authorities.

When that happens, he predicts, other Caribbean’s sun and beach destinations, such as Cancun and Riviera Maya, will suffer the consequences, and they better be prepared.

“There is still time, but Mexico will need to prepare itself by offering diversification or lower prices”; asserted Romeu.

“Once the travel band is gone, the decision American will make between vacationing in Aruba, Dominican Republic or Mexico it’s going to be obvious. They will prefer Cuba because of its proximity”.

Currently, more than half of the nine million tourists that annually visit Quintana Roo, are Americans. A good number of those visitors could change destination if US and Cuba change the current rules of the game.

They are other reasons for Americans to choose Cuba, other than the proximity. Besides having beaches, which compete in beauty with the Mexican Caribbean; Cuba does not have the safety issues that Mexico has.

One of the decisions Mexico can make now, to be ready for the changes, is to attract a vast number of tourist from the West Coast of United States and from Europe; Romeu stated.

No doubt there will be changes. Will Mexico be prepared to face up to those changes?

CUBA

Pascal Beltrán del Río

REPORT AN ERROR

 

[readon1 url="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/pascal-beltran-del-rio/2015/01/19/1003407?mc_cid=67ee415343&mc_eid=19f8006843"]Source:www.excelsior.com.mx-Translated by MAR Translation Services[/readon1]