Tourists, mostly Canadians, have been transferred to other facilities in the northern cays.
14ymedio, Havana, 29 July 2025 — All the hotels on Cayo Cruz, in Camagüey, Cuba are closed due to a lack of drinking water. The reason was a “breakdown in the main water line” at the tourist resort, according to Dairon Castro, social media manager of Sanctuary White Sands, one of the luxury establishments, who told foreign tourists who learned of the news over the weekend and inquired about its veracity.
Alexis Torres, marketing director for Iberostar Cuba, which has two hotels in the Camagüey tourist resort, reported on Sunday that both his property and nearby hotels “have experienced technical problems with the water supply,” and that work was underway “to resolve this as soon as possible.” He also said, without specifying the destinations, that guests had been transferred to nearby hotels “that maintain the same quality standards, ensuring they continue to enjoy their vacations.”
In other comments, several visitors, mostly Canadians, reported being transferred to hotels elsewhere in the northern cays, especially Cayo Coco. “All travelers will be transferred to other hotels this afternoon,” Amelie Prince advised guests of the Sanctuary White Sands on Friday. For those who had traveled with the Canadian airline Sunwing, she specified that they would be transferred to Luxury Cayo Guillermo.
“We could see this coming, because water had to be rationed more and more.”
“We could see this coming, because we had to ration water more and more,” a worker at one of the hotels in Cayo Cruz, who requested anonymity, told 14ymedio. “We employees are floored,” she continued, “because if there are no customers to tip us, it’s much harder to make ends meet with our salaries.”
Just last year, authorities boasted about work on the now-damaged pipeline —the installation of a 500-millimeter-diameter valve—that would allow for “improved water supply operations.”
Neither the official media nor the Ministry of Tourism have provided any information. In a call to a travel agency booking several accommodations, including the Sanctuary White Sands, they responded that they had no news of closure, either for that establishment or others. “So few customers go there, we don’t know anything,” commented the employee on the other end of the phone.
The latest update was from Dairon Castro, two days ago: “We continue to work intensively, day and night, to resolve the situation with the water supply at the Cayo Cruz hub as quickly as possible. Thank you all for your understanding, and we apologize for the inconvenience.” Repeated questions from travelers about to visit Cuba go unanswered.
“We continue to work intensively, day and night, to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”
“I have guests who were supposed to arrive at Selection this Wednesday. Is there any chance it will reopen? And I’m arriving at Coral on the 6th with a group of 20 people… Should I try to relocate them?” France Fleury asked Alexis Torres of Iberostar on Tuesday. “Has the main water line break been fixed?” Francis Desjardins also asked yesterday about Sanctuary White Sands. Only other guests responded, not hotel managers: “Sunwing was still relocating guests yesterday, who were supposed to arrive at another hotel today.”
This incident adds to the long list of woes facing Cuban tourism facilities—including the poor condition of some airports—summarized by the minister himself, Juan Carlos García Granda, two weeks ago in the National Assembly. There he asserted that for tourism, “this has been the worst time since the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2001, not counting the pandemic period.”
The principal reason given by both García Granda and his colleagues from the Food Industry, Alberto López, and Agriculture, Ydael Pérez Brito, was that there is a current “inability” in production to meet tourism demand.
It was Fidel Castro’s visit to that cay in 1989 that marked the beginning of “the strategy for the development of tourism in that beautiful region.
Nor will the damage help relaunch Cayo Cruz, as the government intended in 2023, as one of the island’s “trendy destinations .” At that time, Alexis Torres himself told Prensa Latina that Iberostar, which operates hotels for the state-owned Gaviota group—owned by the military conglomerate Gaesa—intended to focus on Cayo Cruz and Cayo Paredón, between the provinces of Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey, which he defined as “cays that have remained in the image of clients and tour operators” and “more than 26 kilometers of beach, a lost oasis.”
In effect, the spectacular beaches of Cayo Cruz are praised by travelers on social media, despite the ecological disaster posed by the 43-kilometer causeway that connects it to the mainland built in the 1990s. According to one of the regular eulogies in the official press, it was Fidel Castro’s visit to the cay in 1989 that marked the beginning of “the strategy for the development of tourism in this beautiful region in the north of the province.”
There are several hotels in the area. In addition to the Sanctuary White Sands Resort and the Iberostar Selection Esmeralda and Coral Esmeralda hotels, there are also La Marina Plaza & Spa and Valentin Cayo Cruz.
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