Source::Xinhuanet
HAVANA,
Cuba's top tourist destination Havana, where music once reverberated on streets, taxi drivers were busy picking up passengers at airport, and foreigners bustled in souvenir shops, has seen sharp fall in tourist arrivals due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Dayron Paz, a 38-year-old taxi driver, used to drive tourists for Havana's scenery down a coastal boulevard with his pink vintage car. But things have gone south for Paz as the capital city, which accounts for nearly half of Cuba's new cases since February, struggled to contain the spread of the virus. "It has been more than a year since my last tour with foreign visitors. It has been a very hard period, indeed," he told Xinhua. Paz, who was effectively laid off from his job at the Nostalgic Car, a private company, relocated to the central town of Camajuani, some 300 km east of Havana. He now works in the agriculture sector.
"This is not what I would have expected to be doing by this time, but the pandemic has disrupted the normal course of life," Paz said. Official figures showed that more than 60 percent of pre-pandemic international tourists destined for Cuba visited Havana, home to 2 million inhabitants. Silvia Canals runs La Casona del Son, a private salsa school in the city-center of Havana, gathering some 20 tutors. She wonders if tourism will ever go back to normal. "We used to teach salsa, kizomba, and Caribbean rhythms to tourists, but with no foreigners coming in, there is no business," she said. "Cuban nationals do not pay for salsa classes."
Only about 1.1 million tourists visited Cuba last year, and most of them were before mid-March, when the country detected its first three cases in the city of Trinidad and closed borders. This followed by reopening of borders in early July for tourists destined for the northern and southern regions.
It was not until early September that a plane carrying 104 international passengers from Canada arrived at Cuba's Jardines del Rey archipelago. Rafael Lopez, director of Muthu Hotels, said that Cuba has adopted precautionary measures at hotel facilities to reduce the risk of contagion with the virus.
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