Gone are 36 years of Spanish hotel management in the market where Spain’s hotel groups consolidated their Caribbean cash generators, leaving Cuba without a single Spanish group for the first time since 1990.
The Exit, in Numbers
Cuba was where Spanish expansion in the Caribbean took its most distinctive form. Meliá opened in Varadero in 1990, and Iberostar, Barceló and the rest followed through that decade. The structure was specific to the island: In most instances the State owned the asset and the international operator ran it. Their exit ends that cycle.
Cuba had built one of the largest hotel markets in the Caribbean, over 80,000 rooms, with 18 percent of supply concentrated in Havana. Spanish operators controlled around 40 percent of it, a concentration with no parallel in any other hotel market, mostly under management contracts, plus some 15 joint ventures with the Ministry of Tourism where they co-invested.
Meliá led with more than 35 hotels and some 14,000 rooms, 15 to 18 percent of national supply, followed by Iberostar with around 7,000, and then Barceló, Valentín, Blau, BlueBay, Be Live, NH and Roc. Havana put the total at seven international chains exiting the market, together managing 46 percent of the total stock.
Cuba has been the most profitable business unit Meliá ever had, and its disclosures show how far that had decayed. In 2015-2017 the island generated an estimated 25 percent of group revenue and over 25 percent of EBITDA. By 2025 that was 6 to 9 percent of turnover and 2 percent of EBITDA. First-half results published on July 30, 2026 confirm a €79.4 million provision tied to the exit.
Demand had been deteriorating long before Washington’s latest sanctions. Arrivals fell from a peak of 4.2 million in 2019 to 2.2 million in 2024 and an estimated 1.8 million in 2025, driven by Covid, fuel shortages and blackouts. The cheap PDVSA oil that kept the Cuban grid running was cut as a direct consequence of Washington’s actions in Venezuela.
Asset Claims and Legal Considerations
The exit has been financially survivable for the Spanish groups precisely because they mostly did not own the real estate. In a recent hotel investment podcast I discussed those seizures with Cuba legal expert Hermenegildo Altozano, Partner at Pinsent Masons: The roughly 6,000 claims registered with the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission are worth close to $8.5 billion today, but the practical exposure on the hotels is far narrower.
Overtaking the DR (Again) as the #1 Caribbean Market
Washington has no domestic legal basis in Cuba comparable to the one it claimed in Venezuela, and has taken an economic route rather than a military one. The sequence is recognizable: Cut the energy supply, squeeze the economy, and negotiate the terms of a transition directly with the government in place. Venezuela took a weekend. Cuba could take longer, but not much longer.
The obvious reading of all these events is that there is no reason to force out the operators running 40 percent of a country’s hotel supply unless the intention is for U.S. brands to take their place.
As at the end of the Obama administration and the start of the first Trump term, Cuba again looks capable of displacing the Dominican Republic and its 9 million arrivals in 2025 as the largest tourism market in the region. The island sits 20 minutes from the world’s largest and most affluent feeder market (180 million passports), and its potential for second homes and branded residences is back on the table.
What Comes Next: A Legal Framework and Major CapEx Injections
The next investment decision in Cuba will be who injects the capex that a fifteen-year-old, under-maintained hotel base needs. As I have seen first hand, those assets have been structurally under-invested for years, the result of restricted access to capital and management agreements that gave operators limited incentive to fund refurbishment. Bringing them up to the brand standards US operators apply elsewhere will entail a substantial effort.
The legal framework is the harder prerequisite, and it weighs more heavily on an American entrant. The U.S. brands most likely to arrive are listed companies whose boards answer to institutional shareholders, a different tolerance for regulatory ambiguity than the family-controlled Spanish groups. Title certainty and a working mechanism for repatriating funds are the conditions on which entry will depend.
There is a second prerequisite, intrinsic to hospitality itself. A hotel operator’s service is delivered by its staff, which is why international operators arrive with labour and compensation standards attached: They cannot deliver a consistent guest experience without them. Proper labour and wage terms for Cuban hotel employees should be a condition of entry, and that is the part of this transition with the largest implications for the Cuban ecosystem.
Ivar Yuste is Partner at PHG Hotels & Resorts and President of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants.
