Cuba has revised down by about 15 percent its forecast for the number of tourists visiting this year, after a US ban on cruise ship stopovers in the communist island, the government said on Thursday.
US President Donald Trump’s administration announced the ban on June 4, aiming to cut an essential revenue source for a country that Washington accuses of helping prop up Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“Despite the US government’s measures to curb tourism in our country, we will welcome 4.3 million visitors in 2019,” Cuban Minister of Tourism Manuel Marrero said in a televised address to parliament.
That is about 15 percent down on forecasts of 5.1 million tourists for this year and about 10 percent lower than the number of visitors last year.
Nearly 900,000 tourists visited the island on cruise ships last year, and almost 40 percent were from the US, official figures showed.
Cuba seemed set to welcome record numbers of US cruise ship tourists this year. In the first four months 250,000 arrived, double the rate of the previous year.
After the sale of medical services, tourism is the island’s second-biggest source of earnings, bringing revenues estimated at US$2.5 billion per year.
American tourism in Cuba took off after then-US president Barack Obama moved to ease a half-century trade embargo in 2014, but Trump tightened policy within months of taking office.
Cuba received more than 400,000 US tourists between January and May this year.
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