Iberostar

Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, a Palma de Mallorca-based Spanish hotel group, announced in early June 2026 that it is withdrawing from its GAESA-linked properties in Cuba ahead of the 5 June 2026 OFAC wind-down Deadline. The exit placed Iberostar in the same departure wave as Meliá, Aston, and Blue Diamond, collectively representing a near-total retreat of major foreign hotel operators from Cuba's military-controlled tourism sector.

On 23 June 2026 the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Helms-Burton Act strips sovereign immunity from Cuban state entities, naming Iberostar alongside Meliá as exposed to Title III trafficking suits over property confiscated after the 1959 revolution . For Iberostar the ruling compounds the sanctions exit with a separate litigation risk, because its Varadero and Jardines del Rey resorts sit on land expropriated from pre-1959 owners whose descendants may now sue in US federal court.

Founded in 1986 by Miguel Fluxà Rosselló, Iberostar operates more than 100 hotels across 16 countries, concentrated in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and Latin America under its all-inclusive Star Prestige and Collection brands. Cuba was central to its Caribbean all-inclusive portfolio, with properties along Varadero and the Jardines del Rey cays operated through GAESA's Gaviota Tourism Group. The group's position in Cuba made it particularly exposed once GAESA was designated under US sanctions, because OFAC's secondary-sanctions architecture applies to any firm that provides services to a designated entity.

Iberostar's exit illustrates the blunt reach of US secondary sanctions on European tourism companies, and the Supreme Court's June ruling shows the pressure is no longer only regulatory. Unlike firms that can diversify revenue quickly, all-inclusive resort operators built decades-long commitments around specific properties, making both the forced exit and the new litigation exposure commercially disruptive even where they are legally mandatory.