The Ministry of Transportation will invest in a modern cruise terminal at the port of Cienfuegos, which is thought of as “something big, something at world level,” announced José Enrique Gonzalez, an officer at the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) in the Pearl of the South.
In August, more than 30 luxury ships had called at the ports of the center and south of Cuba, which means the largest number of cruise ship arrivals since the start of this type of tourism on the island in 1996.
Fifty-three boats are expected to arrive in Cienfuegos as part of the arrival plan for next season. The rise shows the revitalization of the cruise services in Cienfuegos, 250 kilometers southeast of Havana.
Out of them, 37 of them will dock in port facilities nearby the historic center of the city, which is the place of location of the future terminal. Meanwhile, the remaining 16 arrivals will operate in open waters of the Caribbean Sea near the Faro Luna hotel, on the beach at Rancho Luna.
The number of stops in Cuban ports, administered by the Ministry of Transport, was about 125 last season. Of these, 28 docked at the Olimpia Medina pier, in the Cienfuegos bay.
This port is the second largest in the country in terms of operations. Cruises, like large floating hotels are usually looking for the tourist attractions of the province, which are concentrated in the bay, the music of Benny Moré and the beauty of the neoclassical city of the nineteenth century.
New impetus for the cruise industry in Cuba
Only in the period from November last year to May this year, about seven thousand 990 foreigners arrived in the coves of Casilda in Sancti Spiritus and Cienfuegos under transit tourism in cities like Cienfuegos and Trinidad, declared World Heritage Cultural Heritage.
This increase in cruise ship visits to ports on the island has happened in the last seasons, since Cuba in 2005 broke its contract with the Italian company Silares Caribbean Terminals, which managed the cruise industry on the Island; Fidel Castro denounced such trips then exploited the small Caribbean countries and used them as landfill.
This decision, published in the Official Gazette in August 2005, declared “extinct” concessions “to manage docks, piers and necessary for docking cruise ships and ferry operations.”
However, the cruise industry has continued behaving worldwide as a very competitive phenomenon, moving hundreds of thousands of people in tourist travel.
In 2003, two years before the break with Silares Caribbean Terminals, an increase in cruise ship visits to Cuban ports was seen, with more than 28 operations that year in premises of the Central Port Services Company.
