U.S TRAVEL TO CUBA MIGHT BE OPEN FULLY BY OCTOBER
Travel Trade Caribbean

Kingston, Jamaica, June 25, 2009 -- Steven Jackson,  Jamaica Observer's Business writer said in a article this month that two Washington "think tanks" expect the US travel ban on Cuba to be totally lifted this year in a move which Jamaica views with fortune and fear.

"Jamaican small hotels will likely feel the brunt of possible fallout to the local sector," considered the report.

The US Congress will vote in September on lifting the ban according to Daniel Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue and Sarah Stephens for Centre for Democracy in the Americas. Both were in Kingston last week at a conference on Caribbean Studies and presented on US-Cuba Relations: A Roundtable Discussion with Washington Think Tanks, quoted Jackson.

"I think it's possible by September or October that congress will lift the travel ban for all Americans to Cuba," said Stephens whose think tank is lobbying the US government for the end of the five-decade-old US/Cuba embargo. "It will be very tough to get to that final ending of the embargo anytime soon. But I think that the lifting of the current travel ban is real. I think that can happen and part of the reason is that it is in Congress' hands and they want to do it."

The Inter-American Dialogue aims to stimulate debate and discussion on the proper course for US-Cuba policy, focusing on the US Congress, whilst facilitating Cuba's integration into the global economy.

"I think that the lifting of the travel ban is exactly right. The debate in the US today is about lifting the ban on the ability of ordinary Americans to travel to Cuba and I see this as being the thread that -- if you pull it, it can unravel the whole sweater," Erikson added that travel to Cuba will lead to US business lobbying congress to lift the embargo.

"The notion of tourists going to Cuba staying in Spanish and Canadian hotels driving around on Chinese buses. Only the food is American nothing else. This is going to get American business interested. And once you mobilize the US business community then you start to get some real political weight behind change beyond the intellectual arguments being made. So I think what we need to watch for is the vote on the travel ban."

Currently only Cuban-Americans can visit Cuba but there are fears that, once the market fully opens to Americans, Jamaica will see a drop in its visitors.

The Jamaican government expects total arrivals to increase by 5.9 per cent in the 2009/10 fiscal year to 2.997 million. Of that amount it expects stopover arrivals to increase by 11.2 per cent to 2.02 million and cruise arrivals to increase by 3.2 per cent to 995,000. In the 2008/9 fiscal year, tourism earnings were estimated at US$1.99 billion, wrote Jackson.

Anne Crick, head of hospitality and tourism management at the University of the West Indies, Mona, stated that Jamaica may see a short-term reduction in hotel occupancy but that the strength of the product will offset any fallout.

"I think realistically that there will be a curiosity factor. So everyone will be interested in Cuba at first and I suspect that in the short-term there will be a fallout or displacement," Crick told the Business Observer, "but our product is sophisticated and we are positioning ourselves so that we have a fighting chance. And the players in the tourism sector were not watching this happen without planning. Some of them actually have operations in Cuba."

Additionally, the Cuban tourism market is growing, offering Jamaican hoteliers investment opportunities. (Source: Jamaica Observer)