Want to Visit Cuba? Better Go While You Still Can Christopher Elliott - Newsweek
go to original January 16, 2017

NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Amy Guttman looks at the growing hospitality industry in Cuba (PBS NewsHour)

It seems like every travel organization in the country is out with its “must visit” list for 2017. What do they say? They’re literally all over the map, but one place gets repeated mentions: Cuba.

The U.S. Tour Operators Association singled out the island nation as the hottest destination of 2017, while the website for the travel guidebook Frommer’s listed Cuba as one of the best places to go this year. Based on search data, the airfare website Skyscanner.com named Havana the top destination of the year. Virtuoso, the travel agency consortium, includes Havana on its list of “emerging” destinations.

“I would love to go to Cuba before it gets ruined by capitalism,” wrote Alicia Nieva-Woodgate, a Denver consultant.

Laurie Fullerton, an author who lives in Marblehead, Mass., feels the same way. “Unfortunately,” she wrote, “the cruise ships are on their way.”

Their fears may be well-founded. Anyone who visited Eastern Europe just after the fall of the Iron Curtain knows how quickly a destination can go from affordable and interesting to expensive and overcommercialized. For a year or two, places like Prague or Warsaw were affordable. And then they were discovered by American tourists, and — poof! — there go the authenticity and the bargains.

“I hate these sorts of pieces where the media has to arbitrarily pronounce something is hot,” says Doug Lansky, a longtime advocate for sustainable tourism. “Then people flock there before the place can brace for crowds or create a strategic plan, it gets overcrowded and overdeveloped, then people are directed to the next hot spot, leaving the destination discarded like a nightclub that’s no longer trendy.”

Lansky cites the example of Jericoacoara, a remote Brazilian fishing village that, after a guidebook declared it the world’s most beautiful beach, became overrun by tourists.

Other travelers have more immediate concerns.

Pauline Frommer, editorial director of Frommers.com, notes that Cuba made her site’s list as a last-minute addition. “That was a ‘visit-it-while-you-still-can’ pick,” she said.

Indeed, in the weeks since the election, some travel suppliers have cut back their Cuba itineraries, anticipating a slump in demand, if not a complete stop in tourism from the United States. For example, in December, American Airlines announced that it would cut nearly a quarter of its flights to Cuba for early 2017, citing weak demand.

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