Ministry of Tourism

Minister: Ibrahim Ferradaz García.
Graduate in Economic Control

Address: Calle 19 No. 710, Vedado, La Habana
Telephone: 33 4202

By means of the 147 Ordinance-Law on the modification of the organisms of the Central Administration of the State, April, 21, 1994 was created the Ministry of Tourism to exercise the rectoring functions of political management, regulation and control of the sector and the managerial activity in it.

The MINTUR is the state leading organism of the System of Tourism, in which participate other entities of the country. In this sense, the MINTUR elaborates the politics and controls its application in the entities that administer the properties of the sector directly. Its current strategic objectives are the following ones:

1. To Design and to sum up a more efficient commercialization of the tourist product
2. To Increase and to diversify a more competitive tourist offer
3. To recover and to make grow the hotel infrastructure
4. To elevate the level of economic efficiency of the System of Tourism
5. To develop until the most advanced levels the computer science and the communication systems
6. To incorporate more foreign capital to the development of the tourism
7. To enlarge the projection of the temporary horizon of the development of tourism to the year 2010, as well as to adapt the organizational structures to the development rhythms.

The tourism is not a new activity in Cuba. The same as in the world had its peak starting from the years 50. In that time, when the tourist development in the biggest of the Antilles was very bound to the North American presence in the Island, United States was the main market, and the game and the prostitution were the main offers of the Island. This city tourism conditioned the little development of our natural product in that stage.

Starting from 1959, the development of the economy was directed to other important programs of the country, reason why, the tourism, was then fundamentally national, fact that conditioned a not very competitive residential structure as international product.
In the years 80 the reopening begins to the international tourism, but it is in 1990 that a new focus of the development of this sector takes place, the first mixed companies are created and there is an accelerated growth in the arrivals of visitors and in the revenues. From 1996, when it was possible for the first time to surpass the million of visitors, Cuba has intended to consolidate like destination of the Caribbean and world.

To market its tourist product, the biggest of the Antilles counts, mainly, with the popular hospitality and quality of its people, exceptional natural attractiveness, a historical autochthonous patrimony, fruitful artistic and cultural life, and a unique sanitary development, the political stability and the security for the tourists.