Iberostar and Cuba’s Tourism Industry: A New Chapter in Hotel Management and Growth
With its increasing economic difficulties, Cuba is trying to make significant changes to its tourism sector. To help recover the tourism sector, drastically harmed by the pandemic and heavy bureaucracy, the Cuban government will now permit international hotel chains to lease hotels owned by the state.
This new policy is intended to improve productivity, service quality of hotels operated by the state, and increase the number of tourists. The government of Cuba plans to implement the changes at the Iberostar Origin Laguna Azul located in Varadero, Cuba. The Iberostar chain of hotels will begin operation of the leased hotel on January 1, 2026. Iberostar will begin the transition as the first initiative of the Cuban government’s rapid change in the tourism sector.
The Iberostar involvement pilot projects will undergo an evaluation process at intervals to determine their success. As per EFE reports, terms of the contracts will be determined case-by-case, with no uniform standard. This implies that every contract made between the Cuban state and the foreign chain of hotels will be tailored specifically to correspond with the requirements of the hotels and the markets they operate.