Export Ban Drives Cuba To Non-US Analytics Software To Boost Tourism

dkatana writes with some crucial lines from an article at InformationWeek: Currently Cuba receives around 2.8 million visitors every year, half of them from Canada. Mintur, the Cuban Tourist Ministry, estimates that if Americans were free to travel to Cuba today, the number of visitors would increase by two million the first year. Last year the Cuban government was interested in getting its hands on analytics software to process the data generated by visitors on social networks. ... Because of the existing ban on American companies supplying technology to Cuba, Havana had to look somewhere else and found SocialVane, a small Spanish company on the island of Menorca, which has been working with the local tourist sector to analyze issues, trends, and potentials of the tourism industry.

Comments

And Cuba will be fucked ...

[gstoddart]

the Cuban Tourist Ministry, estimates that if Americans were free to travel to Cuba today, the number of visitors would increase by two million the first year

I've been to Cuba 5 times in the last 8 years or so, and while I really like Cuba and the Cubans, I've also seen a considerable decline over that time.

The quality of the service has gone down. The resort staff are much less interested in good service and are now expecting tips. They doubled the size of the airport, but their internal stuff couldn't scale, so there can be days where it takes hours to check in for your flight.

Cuba has a lot of older resorts. It's still a really poor country with some shady infrastructure.

If you start throwing millions of Americans into that mix, I firmly believe the systems won't be able to handle it.

The last two times I was there the airport devolved into madness and chaos, because they had more passengers and aircraft than they could handle.

And there's going to be a lot of disappointed Americans as they discover that the effects of the embargo is a country which is impoverished and can't give them the kind of experience they want.

Honestly, for me, Florida is becoming more attractive than Cuba. The same weather, all the first world amenities, and none of the tourist stomach ailments.

I just don't think Cuba will weather a sudden influx of more tourists who are expecting first world luxuries. Cuba is beautiful and charming, but it's also small and poor.

Re:And Cuba will be fucked ...

[rubycodez]

Nonsense.

influx of money means the "system" of which you speak will grow.

plenty of other third world countries prove the point

Re:And Cuba will be fucked ...

[gstoddart]

If you think an influx of money will magically fix a country which has a limited infrastructure and widespread poverty you're foolish and naive.

Maybe in the long run it will improve things.

In the short run I predict it will create a shitstorm which will be to the detriment of the Cubans.

You can't go from being embargoed to not embargoed overnight and expect that to work well at all. It simply doesn't work that way.

Until they can build up their infrastructure, and make some systemic changes to their economy, a sudden influx of Americans looking for McDonald's and five star resorts will not have good outcomes for Cuba.

I think it's long overdue to get rid of the embargo, but there's no way in hell I believe opening the floodgates to American tourists will have anything but a disruptive and negative effect for the immediate future.