22OCT

Cuban tourism falls 62 per cent

2 min read

17:12UTC

Cuba's statistics office recorded 419,000 visitors from January to July against 1.1 million a year earlier, as hotel chains suspended contracts and airlines dropped flights over refuelling.

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Key takeaway

Cuban arrivals fell 62 per cent, and the airlines that left will not return quickly.

Cuba's national statistics office (ONEI) recorded 419,000 visitors from January to July against 1.1 million a year earlier, a fall of 62 per cent and a worsening on the 55.8 per cent recorded to April. Those are state figures, and they reached Lowdown through Associated Press because ONEI's own site could not be reached⁠¹.

Meliá, Iberostar and Royalton have suspended their contracts, and World2Fly, Air France, Turkish Airlines and Iberia suspended flights after refuelling stopped⁠². An aircraft that cannot take on fuel at a Cuban airport cannot fly the route home, whatever the bookings look like, so the fuel shortage that darkens the island also removes the means of reaching it.

Capacity and demand then run on separate clocks. An airline that drops a route moves the aircraft and the crew onto another one, and bringing it back needs a slot, a published schedule and a season to sell into. A hotel chain that has released its rooms has to re-contract them. Cuba is losing the sector twice over, once in the visitors who did not arrive this year and once in the capacity that will not be waiting when they might.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Cuba's national statistics office, ONEI, counted 419,000 foreign visitors between January and July 2026, down from 1.1 million in the same period last year, a fall of 62 per cent. The drop got worse as the year went on, and airlines responded: World2Fly, Air France, Turkish Airlines and Iberia all suspended flights once they could no longer reliably refuel in Cuba. Hotel chains Meliá, Iberostar and Royalton suspended contracts too. Tourism has long been one of Cuba's main sources of foreign currency, so fewer visitors means less hard currency reaching an economy already short of it.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The worsening trend, from a 55.8 per cent year-on-year fall recorded to April to 62 per cent by July, tracks the deepening fuel crisis more closely than it tracks sanctions timing. Aviation fuel shortages disrupting refuelling are the proximate cause airlines cited directly for suspending routes.

A second cause is data itself: ONEI's own website was unreachable, and the figures reached the public through Associated Press rather than a Cuban government release, suggesting either a technical failure or reluctance to publish a number this unfavourable directly.

Sources:Associated Press

Mentions:Meliá →Iberostar →Air France →France →Cuba →Associated Press →

First Reported In

Update #14 · Havana makes the hiring middleman optional

Associated Press· 8 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Tourism falls 55.8% as the peso slides

The January-July tourism fall of 62 per cent worsened from the 55.8 per cent recorded to April.

Occurred 15 Jun 2026

Read story →

This Event

Cuban tourism falls 62 per cent

An airline that pulls a route does not put it back in the week demand returns.

Different Perspectives

UN General Assembly

The Assembly passed last year's resolution against the US embargo by 165 votes to 7, with 12 abstentions, and votes again on 28 October. That count is the baseline against which Havana's lobbying claims and Washington's pressure will be measured.

Mexican Navy (Secretaría de Marina)

A Mexican Navy team inspected Grace at Progreso and found fuel in its ballast tanks, according to the US Coast Guard. The account of Mexico's role comes from Washington; the Mexican government's own position on the stop is not on record in the sources reviewed.

Pedro Monreal, independent Cuban economist

Monreal says the gazette contains no rule for the exchange-house licence ADT 64 received, so nobody knows how a second firm could apply. He says a representative rate would need at least ten houses in five provinces, Havana included.

Prisoners Defenders and OCDH (Madrid-based exile monitors)

Prisoners Defenders counted a record 1,351 political prisoners at the end of September, and OCDH logged at least 344 repressive actions that month. OCDH asked the European Union on 11 September to investigate possible trafficking in Cuba's medical brigade in Italy.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier

Uthmeier announced a no-bond state warrant for Raúl Castro on 19 October over the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, after reopening the state investigation last year. The four men killed flew for a Miami exile group, and the warrant restricts Castro's travel rather than reaching him in Cuba.

Cuban government (Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla)

Rodríguez said on 21 October that Washington is pressing governments to abstain or leave the hall in the 28 October UN vote and called Florida's Raúl Castro warrant worthless. Havana is presenting its October oil and trade rules as openings and the US measures as an energy blockade.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.