Everyone Loses in Cuba Cruise Ban

I talked yesterday with a colleague who, while contacting me on another matter, commented: “It’s a good thing we got to Cuba when we did!”

How right she was.

I’m lucky to have traveled to Cuba twice in the last three years, my first visits to the country in nearly 30 years as a travel writer. For me, the announcement that the Trump administration had banned cruise ships from sailing to Cuba from American ports seemed mostly sad.

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For starters, thousands of cruise-ship travelers who had booked Caribbean voyages marketed on the strength of their inclusion of Cuba abruptly found themselves bereft of nothing less than a vacation dream. As one Twitter commenter wailed, “Please tell me that my cruise to Cuba [in 18 days] is still going to be a cruise to Cuba!”

Nope. He’s out of luck. While each of the major cruise operators sailing to Cuba, including Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival Cruises and Royal Caribbean International, say they are evaluating the situation, there doesn’t appear to be much hope for a reversal.

Also among the out-of-luck are cruise line officials, whom I imagine are somewhat flummoxed at their precipitous loss of an extremely popular Caribbean port to which they had only recently regained access.

Yet, as top cruise executives have pointed out on other occasions, cruise ships are mobile hospitality assets. In the end, Havana and other Cuban cities will simply be replaced by other Caribbean ports of call.

In fact, Royal Caribbean has done just that, adjusting its June 5 and 6 sailings to remove stops in Cuba. The line will communicate updates to guests, according to a statement on the company’s website.

In the end, the real losers include American tourists, who once again have virtually no opportunity to visit one of the Caribbean’s most fascinating countries.

My first visit to Cuba, a seven-day roundtrip departure from Montego Bay aboard Celeystal Cruises’ 960-passenger Celestyal Crystal in 2017, was a fantastic journey. Our press group toured Havana in classic cars, sampled rum drinks in communities around the island and enjoyed a fantastic lunch in an impossibly ornate dining room in a restored mansion in the colonial city of Trinidad de Cuba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Every day seemed to bring a new adventure and learning experience. Our guides and lecturers couldn’t have been better prepared or more friendly and accommodating. They also provided an insightful look into the lives of everyday Cubans, many of whom view tourism as a rare opportunity for economic advancement and a measure of self-determination.

As it happens, I returned to Cuba only one month ago—and this time not as part of an assignment, but as a surprise gift from my wonderful wife Karen, who had been to the country as a teenager but not since.

We were both thrilled to return. And while our voyage aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Sky spent just short of 24 hours in Havana, we had a ball touring the city by day and enjoying the fabulous Tropicana show the same evening.

Later in the voyage, we talked with a young professional from Newark, N.J. who booked the voyage as a solo traveler on a last-minute lark. She’d made friends during the trip and told us how she also toured Havana by day (in a hop-on, hop-off bus) and visited the city’s late-night night clubs until around 3 a.m.

Our new friend said she felt safe the entire time and enjoyed herself immensely. No doubt she went home with a few lifetime memories. Unfortunately, Tuesday’s news ends the fun for millions of potential tourists.

Still if asked, I’d have to say the biggest losers are the Cuban guides, classic car taxi drivers, food vendors, merchants, street performers and workers at cultural institutions for whom tourism represents a crucial source of employment and engagement.

For these folks, the changes mean lost jobs and economic opportunity, and a reinforcement of the hardscrabble existence to which too many of the country’s ordinary citizens have been sentenced. In fact, it’s hard for me to figure out who wins in this scenario, if anyone.