Cuba’s Minister of Tourism announced in an interview with the Spanish newspaper ‘El País’ that there will be direct flights between Barranquilla and Santiago de Cuba.
14ymedio, June 25, 2025 — Cuba’s Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, has a proposal to encourage tourism in Cuba: the creation of a visa-free common area in Latin America. The idea does not seem, for now, to be more than in his head, but he outlined it in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País during a meeting with tourism entrepreneurs in Colombia, held at the Hotel Dann Carlton, north of Bogotá.
“Perhaps we need to start talking about visas that can be used for several countries, as is the case with the Schengen Area in Europe. We must see how the world has done it and apply it in the region to attract common benefits from such distant tourist flows,” says García Granda, who considers it essential to reduce bureaucracy. The official introduces the proposal when asked about the Chinese market, which Cuba has been dreaming about for at least two years.
The minister explains to the journalist that the decline in traditional markets, particularly in Europe, has led his department to try to look for new fishing grounds, including Turkey, China and Russia. “We already have better [tourism] flows that we want to grow. And we want to do so by providing a unique offering as a region that benefits us and by sharing it, he states.
“We already have better [tourism] flows that we want to grow. And we want to do so by providing a unique offering as a region that benefits us and by sharing it”
García Granda omits a part of the reality revealed by his own data. The number of Russian tourists arriving on the island has plummeted so far this year. Until 2024 the evolution was positive, reaching third place by origin and with around 185,000 travelers last year, but in 2025, a decline of around 50% began. It is true that the number of Turks (12.6%) and, above all, the Chinese (48.6%) visitors increased, but the figures are still anecdotal: 14,898 and 26,760 respectively.
The minister says that another strategy is to increase connectivity. “Faced with such a difficult scenario, we are trying to strengthen markets that we have always had, like Colombia, Mexico and Brazil,” he says. The last two had a good evolution last year, maintaining the figures of Mexico, which is not small in view of the debacle of the sector, and Brazil rose by 11 percent. However, Colombia did have a substantial drop: 32,604 travelers arrived from that country, 20% fewer than in 2024.
Perhaps the effort to recover the lost quota was part of García Granda’s meeting with some 30 tour operators and sales managers of Colombian airlines. El País reports that beginning July 3, the airlines will have a new route between Barranquilla and Santiago de Cuba, coinciding with the celebration of the Caribbean Festival. “This demonstrates how there are still people with enthusiasm and knowledge of Cuba and the Colombian market. I think they have made a bet that has every chance of winning,” says the minister. Although there are no more details about these routes, the Colombian press has indicated that they are charter flights and also suggests that they will continue after the event.
“All the people know that the economic benefits of the sector bring prosperity and cushion the effects of these very difficult times.”
In the interview, García Granda tries to convince the journalist, as he does in Cuba, that the investment effort made by the State is aimed at improving the conditions of citizens. “All the people know that the economic benefits of the sector bring prosperity and cushion the effects of these very difficult times,” he said, when asked by the journalist about a possible rejection of the population towards the strength of the hotel sector in the middle of the long blackouts. “That [narrative] has tried to provoke the counter-revolution and slanderous campaigns,” he spit out.
Next, García Granda, after claiming that the establishments have their own generators, tries to soften his remarks. “I would not say that there is an isolated system of energy generation, but we work so that the weight of our consumption [that of the hotel sector] does not necessarily fall on the shoulders of the population.”
In the interview, there was also time to talk about the United States. The journalist asks García Granda if Havana plans to improve relations with Washington in order to recover the sector. The minister remarks that the ball is in the court of the White House, which prevents its citizens from traveling to the island. “It is very bad that governments prohibit their citizens from deciding freely, and the world should help citizens to do so and not sell the US as a symbol of freedom,” he argues.
The official also wants the journalist to ask former president Barack Obama – who was in Cuba in April 2016 – “what is the only place where the Beast (Obama’s armored car) has walked and even the people threw a tomato at him.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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