Winter tourism season booms in Cuba

Winter tourism season booms in Cuba

By Mimi Whitefield -
mwhitefield@MiamiHerald.com

03/09/2015 5:41 PM
| Updated: 03/10/2015 8:46 AM


[font size=1]
Tourists take in the sights from a double-decker tour bus a day after the second round of diplomatic talks between the United States and Cuban officials took place in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 28, 2015. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
[/font]
A dozen tour buses idled along the Malecón and so many tourists were snapping pictures of the giant images of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos on a recent day at the Plaza de la Revolución that it looked like a Communist theme park.

Foreign visitors are coming to Cuba in droves this winter season. International visitors were up by 16 percent in January to a record 371,160 compared to the previous year, according to figures from Cuba’s Office of National Statistics and Information.

That came on the heels of a record-setting year in 2014 when 3.003 million international visitors arrived in Cuba. And that’s not counting hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans who travel to the island to visit family.

Canada led the way with 181,101 visitors in January for a 15 percent increase, but Germany with 15,832 and England with 14,526 visitors showed the largest percentage increases. Visitor arrivals for those countries were up 37.8 percent and 32.2 percent, respectively.

Rounding out the Top 10 for international visitors were France, Italy, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Spain and Russia. However, arrivals from Argentina and Russia — both plagued by economic problems — were down by 24.1 percent and 23 percent, respectively.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/international-business/article13130942.html#storylink=cpy