Canadian travel to Cuba on a double-digit downturn in early 2025

CBC

04-05-2025

Cuba saw a double-digit drop in the number of Canadians visiting the island nation this past winter, raising questions about what's behind the slide.
Data from Cuba's national statistical agency reveals that the number of Canadians travelling there was at least 30 per cent below last year's numbers in January, February and March.
Yet the downward shift goes beyond visitors from Canada, with Cuba also reporting a decreasing number of tourist visits from Russia, Spain and Italy, among other countries.
The director of the Cuban Tourism Board in Toronto was out of the country this week and not available for comment. But the country's national tourism minister has recently hinted at the "complex" challenges Cuba is facing.
Several domestic airlines and travel operators confirm they are seeing less travel to the Caribbean country that drew more than one million Canadian visitors annually in the years before the pandemic.
"The reported decline in Canadian travel to Cuba aligns with feedback we're hearing from both customers and our travel experts," Amra Durakovic, head of communications for Flight Centre Canada, told CBC News via email.
Cuba watchers say the country's accumulating economic and social challenges — on full display for tourists who venture away from resorts, and also in media reports — may be contributing to the decline in tourism.
"The reality is that the country has changed significantly for the worse since the early 1990s, when Canadians began visiting the island in large numbers," said Ricardo Torres Pérez, a Cuban economist who pays close attention to the tourism statistics published by the state.
Problems on display
A prominent and recurring problem for Cuba has been its unreliable power grid and the effect that's having on the country and the lives of its people.
For months, Cuba has seen repeated widespread power failures, including on back-to-back occasions last fall when the island was hit by successive hurricanes. There was also a major outage in December, and yet another in March.
Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba analyst who previously lived and studied in Havana, was in Cuba for two of those major outages last year.
He recalls the pictures shown on the news of darkened streets, juxtaposed against images of the lights working at hotels.
"How do you provide an image of a carefree lifestyle, a quick, fun trip, when you have that?" Pertierra asked.
Flight Centre's Durakovic says travellers are paying attention to the very public problems Cuba's been having, including the periodic power outages and limited availability of some essential goods and services, which he says "can understandably play a role in travel decisions."
Since July 2023, Ottawa has warned Canadians to "exercise a high degree of caution" if travelling to Cuba. The full travel advisory points to shortages of food, medicine and fuel, as well as ongoing challenges with the power grid.
Torres Pérez said these problems are tied to Cuba's ongoing economic crisis.
"The crisis has affected the quality of services, the state of infrastructure and has led to frequent blackouts," he said, noting there are also issues around keeping cities clean with "solid waste accumulating in the streets."
Both Torres Pérez and Pertierra also say that amid these struggles, Cuba is seeing more problems with crime than it used to.
"While one could argue that the island remains relatively safe compared to other Latin American countries, crime is on the rise — including incidents of pickpocketing," said Torres Pérez.
'I love the place'
But the lure of Cuba's sunny weather and sandy beaches is strong, and for some Canadians, it's a place they'll continue to visit.
Quebec resident Michel Dubois last visited Cuba in December and says he'll be returning there twice this year.
"I love the place, that's it," said Dubois, a retired TV cameraman and editor, who worked for both CBC and Radio-Canada during his career. "I love the people."
Dubois says he's made friends after making repeat trips to Cuba, and helps supply them with hard-to-come by necessities, like flashlights, when he visits.
Sharon Pedley, of Brampton, Ont., intends to do the same, when she returns to Cuba later this year.
She and her husband will pack an extra suitcase full of necessities — like over-the-counter medication — to bring for Cuban friends they've met through their prior visits.
"You'll find a lot of the tourists that I know of, they'll do the same," said Pedley.
The support that Pedley, Dubois and other like-minded tourists provide in this manner may benefit individual Cubans, but these visitors also provide the country with a critical source of foreign currency.
Pertierra, the Cuba analyst, notes that as tourism wanes, "that will mean less foreign currency," which is critical for the country to have in order to import needed goods and supplies.
A turn to China?
This past week, Reuters reported that Cuba is looking to China as a possible source of new tourists.
In March, the official Cuban Granma newspaper lauded the growing number of Chinese tourists heading to Cuba in recent years — from more than 8,000 visitors in 2022, to a reported 26,760 in 2024.
But those numbers are far lower than the more than 500,000 Canadians who travelled to Cuba in the first three months of 2025 — and that's at a level 30 per cent below last year.
Canadian travel providers point to continued interest from consumers, despite what the Cuban statistics suggest.
"Although there has been a slight softening in bookings for the early part of 2025 compared to the previous year, we are also seeing signs of stabilization in the last month," Marie-Christine Pouliot, manager of public relations for Air Transat, said via email.
Air Canada, meanwhile, told CBC News that "Cuba has been performing very steadily for us."
Torres Pérez says Canada has long been Cuba's single-largest tourism market. Asked how it could potentially act to drive up those numbers, he suggested efforts could be made to improve the quality of service and ensure the hospitality sector has the supplies it needs to serve visitors.