Meliá cuts Cuba hotel operations in half as tourism crisis deepens

Meliá pulled roughly half of its Cuba hotel inventory out of service by the end of March, a stark sign that the island’s tourism model is not just under strain but breaking down under energy shortages, weak air connections and collapsing demand. The Spanish group said it manages 34 establishments in Cuba with more than 5,000 rooms, yet by late March it was operating only about half of that footprint.

The retreat was not sudden. Meliá first reduced availability in early February, starting with three hotels, then widened the cutbacks as the crisis deepened. The open properties were left leaning heavily on domestic tourism, with the company saying nearly all bookings were coming from inside Cuba. That level of local demand could not make up for the loss of foreign visitors, leaving a portfolio built for international tourism running far below the scale it was designed to serve.

Occupancy tells the same story. The hotels that stayed open averaged just 34.1% occupancy from January through March, a weak result for a country that has spent decades betting on sun-and-sand tourism as a pillar of the economy. Airlift has become part of the problem. Air Canada suspended Cuba service effective February 9, 2026 because of an ongoing aviation fuel shortage on the island, and later reporting said other Canadian carriers were also winding down or suspending Cuba flights through the spring. That matters because Canada remains Cuba’s biggest source market.

The numbers behind the wider tourism slump are even more severe. ONEI, Cuba’s official statistics office, tracks the sector, and outside reporting based on those figures showed arrivals in January-October 2024 were 48.23% below the same period in 2019. Another account put total arrivals in 2024 at about 2.2 million, far short of the 4.2 million seen in 2019. By the first two months of 2025, arrivals were still falling, down 29.1% year over year.

Meliá’s own quarterly results, released on May 7, 2026, showed consolidated revenues of €461.6 million, but Cuba remained a drag on the business there. The company’s cutback, combined with flight suspensions and weak occupancy, points to something broader than a bad season: the tourism machine itself is contracting, and the losses are spreading across the island’s resort economy.