Havana details scale of industry collapse for the first time while facing economic crisis and an oil blockade
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenAgence France-PressePublished: 11:48am, 30 Jul 2026Nearly three-quarters of Cuba’s hotels have been closed and the island’s tourism sector has been brought to “almost total paralysis” by US sanctions and fuel shortages, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on Wednesday.
Detailing the scale of the tourism crisis for the first time, Marrero said seven international chains, responsible for about half of all hotel rooms, had left the island.
Tourism had been Cuba’s second-largest source of foreign currency earnings, employing more than 300,000 people before the crisis deepened this year.
Today, Old Havana’s streets, once clogged with tourists seeking sun, salsa and stirred cocktails, are quiet.
Some 73 per cent of hotels have been closed, Marrero said, and about 25,000 workers have been left “in a vulnerable situation”.
Following Havana’s announcement in February of an aviation fuel shortage, Canadian, Russian and European airlines suspended flights to the island.
