A gigantic rectangular mass of concrete and glass – the city’s tallest building – dominates the colonial home’s towering 150-meter skyline with 542 luxurious rooms and majestic views of the city and sea.
Havana’s Selection La Habana hotel, managed by the Spanish chain Iberostar, has not yet been inaugurated, but it is already the target of criticism, and not only for its unusual shape.
Cubans are questioning the government’s allocation of millions of dollars to luxury tourism while the island is grappling with a deep economic crisis and tourism numbers plummeting to historic lows .
“All the money could have been spent building a hospital or a school,” said Sucel Borges, a 26-year-old craftsman known to locals as the “K and 23 building.” I looked up at the towering building where I was and I was in mourning. position.
The new hotel, located near the legendary Havana Libre Hotel and the iconic Coppelia Ice Cream Parlor, is primarily part of a government plan to build a number of upscale establishments in Havana, and will continue to expand existing upscale establishments even during the Covid-19 pandemic. We didn’t stop inside and the hotel was almost empty.
For decades, tourism drove Cuba’s economy, generating up to $3 billion in annual revenue. However, in December, Cuban authorities announced that only 2.2 million tourists would visit the island in 2024, a decrease of about 200,000 from 2023 and more than the 4.2 million tourists who visited in 2019. I said it’s significantly lower.
Cuba, at least to visitors, is frozen in place, thanks to 1950s-era cars and towns devoid of much of the commercial development found elsewhere in the Caribbean. It has long appealed to tourists who are attracted to the mystique of the visible communist island.
The government attributes the decline in tourism to a “perfect storm” of factors, including supply shortages, a severe energy crisis causing widespread power outages, and staff shortages due to immigration and low wages. Additionally, the island is grappling with a surge in U.S. sanctions, including restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens, a ban on cruise ships, and other measures specifically designed to curb the growth of Cuba’s tourism industry.
Canada sends more tourists to Cuba than any other country – recently telling its citizens to “take a high degree of caution in Cuba due to lack of basic necessities such as food, medicine and fuel” he said.
“Tourism is gone,” said Julio Garcia Campos, the driver of a shiny red 1951 Pontiac with its original engine. “Tourists were lining up to ride one of these!” he said, referring to a bygone era when the island was buzzing with American and European travelers after the removal of sanctions by then-President Barack Obama. He said he remembered.
When Barack Obama became president, the tourism industry blossomed. Barriers imposed by Washington on island vacations begin to topple, with airlines launching busy flight networks across the Florida Strait, allowing “people-to-people contacts” to flourish, as the White House has prescribed. I was able to do that.
Like all other hotels in Cuba, New Selection La Habana is state-owned and operated under Gesa, a conglomerate belonging to the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. As a military-run business, it is exempt from audits by the Office of the Chief Warrant Officer and has not disclosed how much it has invested in the 40-story hotel.
Cuban economist Pedro Monreal points out the “inconsistency” of investing capital in the tourism sector when little is allocated to strategic areas such as agriculture.
“It is troubling that agricultural investment lags far behind tourism investment and remains 11 times lower due to food insecurity concerns,” Monreal said on social media last year.
Architects also expressed little enthusiasm for the new hotel, pointing to its disruptive appearance within the environment. Its excessive height violates city regulations and tall glass windows, which are not suitable for a tropical climate.
“This building serves as a perfect example of a class of what not to do from a biotourism design perspective,” said architect and university professor Abel Tableda. Assigned to buildings that add no value to the city.
