14ymedio, Havana, 21 January 2024 — Havanatur has been getting into ideological trouble lately. Their recent ads promoting flights from Cuba to Miami for the equivalent of 229 dollars inexplicably disappeared hours after they were posted. Unlike the previous controversy in December in which the state-run travel agency used an image of Santa Claus, this time the guardians of the anti-imperialist dogma reacted with lightning speed.
The agency was inviting travelers to discover “the beautiful beaches and warm climate of the sunny city” via charter flights from Holguín.
“Are you looking for cheap flights to Miami? Special deals for our valued customers,” read another ad which was also pulled. In addition to trips to Miami, Havanatur also offers flights to Houston and Tampa.
Last December, the agency was immersed in another controversy over ads promoting trips within Cuba. Havanatur published illustrations of a chubby Santa smoking a cigar on the steps of the Cuban Capitol and lounging on one of the island’s beaches.
Though the images were generated by artificial intelligence, the regime’s ideological watchdogs unleashed a wave of fierce criticism in government publications, accusing the agency of succumbing to “seduction by colonialization.” As a result, the problematic posts were deleted.
In July 2022, 14ymedio reported that Havanatur’s prices for its domestic tourism packages were so high that Cubans were not buying them.
To avoid criticism on social media, the state-run agency does not list prices on any of its ads promoting travel within the country, so it is impossible to know how much a trip to any of the hotels in the resort town of Guardalavaca, or to Mayarí’s popular Guayabo Falls in Holguín province, might cost. A decision by the regime’s ideology department now means we won’t know how much Havanatur charges to take one its lucky customers on vacation to enemy territory.
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