Five star Hotel to be built near Havana Airport
HAVANA, July 14 (ACN) The construction of a five star hotel near the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana stands out among the new business proposals included in the portfolio of foreign investment of the Ministry of Tourism.
Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero told ACN that this project responds to the growing demand for accommodation in the Cuban capital, increasingly popular among vacationers from around the world, and to the increase in flights to Cuba.
He stressed that for the new installation variants already exist near the air terminal for its location, and said that building hotels in airport areas is common in other countries, which offers facilities for crews, flight delays or refueling stops.
Coming mainly from the United States, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany, one million 685,381 visitors arrived at the Jose Marti International Airport in 2015, representing an increase of 21 percent compared to the previous year.
Due to the growing interest in Cuba as tourist destination, some airlines strengthen their presence, like the German Air Berlin, which incorporated since May two weekly flights between Düsseldorf and the city of Havana, for a total of five operations each month during the summer.
Recently the U.S. Department of Transportation approved the requests of six local airlines to operate direct regular flights to Havana before the end of the year, even though the citizens of that nation can not travel to Cuba as vacationers because of the restrictions of the blockade.
Distributed in hotels and villas, Havana has 11,309 rooms, representing 20 percent of the accommodation capacity of the country, to which private services are also added.
According to Xonia Beltran, delegate of Mintur in the territory, in the new scenario that availability is insufficient, so works are carried out to increase the number of rooms, taking as starting point the upgrading of hotels and the identification of new private accommodations and also a process of rigorous categorization.
For the upcoming winter season, it is expected to have recovered 14,000 accommodations, mainly in the Habana Libre, Riviera, Acuario hotels, and the reopening of The Old Man and the Sea. (acn)
