Cuba tourist arrivals plunge 48 percent as fuel shortages bite

The sharpest damage came from aviation. Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat suspended or canceled Cuba flights after Cuban authorities warned that airports were running low on jet fuel. The shortfall was expected to run from Feb. 10 through March 11, and Air Europa added a refueling stop in Santo Domingo to keep service moving. EL PAÍS said Air Canada was suspending Cuba operations until May and that Cuban officials had run out of fuel for commercial aviation, forcing airlines to rewrite schedules and reroute passengers abroad. By the time March closed, the numbers told the story: arrivals from Canada were down 54.2 percent, Russian arrivals fell 37.5 percent, and travel from Cubans living abroad, many based in the United States, dropped 42.8 percent.

The tourism slump sits inside a wider energy crisis that has reached far beyond hotels and airports. The United Nations said Cuba’s situation worsened after Washington moved at the end of January to block oil supplies from entering the country, and the island’s national electrical system disconnected three times in the previous month, leaving parts of Cuba in darkness for days at a time. The UN’s updated response plan aimed to support around two million people across eight provinces, underscoring how tourism’s collapse is part of a much broader emergency.

On the ground, the strain shows up in work hours and paychecks. Havana taxi driver Rainier Hernandez said he was lucky to get one or two hours of paid work a day, far below the six hours he used to spend ferrying tourists. Hotel concierge Jonathan Garcia said Cuba’s tourism industry had already been battered by earlier U.S. restrictions and the pandemic. Tour guide Carlos Farinas put the stakes bluntly: “If there is no tourism, there is no economy.”