The Cuban Tourism Industry: Evolution, Challenges, and Prospects

This book by Paolo Spadoni and José Luis Perelló Cabreraexamines the history of tourism in Cuba and the expansion and struggles of international tourism in Cuba in the post-Cold War era.

The Cuban Tourism Industry: Evolution, Challenges, and Prospects begins with a historical review of the development of tourism as an important industry in pre-1959 Cuba and the subsequent decline in the first fifteen years of the revolution before a modest recovery in the second half of the 1970s and during the 1980s. Spadoni and Cabrera continue with a thorough analysis of the remarkable expansion of international tourism in Cuba in the post-Cold War era and in the era of improved relations with the United States that officially began in 2014, along with an assessment of the sector’s economic impact and its main challenges. A critical assessment of the damaging effects on the Cuban tourism sector of stiffened U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, and largely maintained by the Biden administration, is also provided. This book examines tourism trends in Cuba and the Caribbean in the post-pandemic era and sheds additional light on Cuba’s recent tourism performance to underscore key flaws of the Cuban tourism industry and suggest potential adjustments.

Paolo Spadoni is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Augusta University. He is the author of Cuba’s Socialist Economy Today: Navigating Challenges and Change (2014), and Failed Sanctions: Why the U.S. Embargo against Cuba Could Never Work (2010).

José Luis Perelló Cabrera is a retired Professor at the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Havana and an advisor to the Development Directorate of the Ministry of Tourism of Cuba.