Cuba's growing arrivals mount... optimism?

Cuba's growing arrivals mount... optimism?
By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ Inderia@nasguard.com:

Optimism is in the air that the lifting of the U.S.' embargo on Cuba will not bring increased competition to other regional countries — that's despite that nation registering more arrival growth than most of the Caribbean last year, including The Bahamas.

"When a new destination comes in place," said Jean Claude Baumgarten, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council, "the market to the Caribbean grows there will be a share for everybody.

"The Caribbean is diverse and it shows, so I think it will contribute to the growth of the overall market to the Caribbean in cruise products, cultural products."

His statement comes even as Dr. Timothy Ashby, a specialist on trade and investment strategies for Cuba, tells Caribbean tourism leaders that Cuba expects to see at least one million tourists alone when the embargo is lifted, with that number to triple in the next three to five years afterwards.

In fact just last week, Cuba's Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero announced that for the first four months of this year, more than one million tourists visited the island's shores — half the total amount that visited The Bahamas in all of 2009.

Still, the general consensus expressed at the annual Caribbean Hotels and Tourism Investment Conference last week is that the opening up of the country for visitors will not be a threat to the region. Tourism executives throughout the Caribbean agree that the opening up of Cuba would not automatically draw visitors away from other countries in the region, but would instead increase the total number tourists to the Caribbean.

At this point, the Caribbean attracts around 2.2 percent of the world's total arrivals and 2.6 percent of receipts from this category. It's something experts argue could grow much greater if the region would look at branding itself as one destination. According to Baumgarten, Cuba would help strengthen that theme.

"There is opportunity here for a multi-destination product to grow," he said, "provided that the proper inter-island air assistance is in place."

More:
http://www.thenassauguardian.com/bixex/338693707648549.php

U.S. embargo on Cuba. They have known FOR A LONG TIME that it is not only unfair, but it puts in place trade restrictions that are anti-democratic and anti-truly free trade. It simply isn't true that one business' success necessarily means another, similar business' demise. This is generally only true when UNFAIR conditions arise--for instance, a corporate monopoly in the book trade results in small, local book sellers going out of business, or U.S. backed corporate agricultural dumping results in local food producers going bankrupt and the "third world" country victim (Jamaica, for instance) then being unable to feed itself with fresh local produce and the country then becomes dependent on imported dried milk and imported potatoes, etc. (or rice, as in Haiti--once an exporter of rice, now turned into a poverty-stricken importer of U.S. ag rice). The embargo against Cuba is an unfair condition imposed for political reasons (rightwing ex-Cubans having a vulture grip on our political system). Remove it, and GENERAL prosperity is enhanced. One tourist business feeds another. They may be friendly rivals but they don't have to be deadly rivals, and in fact the business and the business advertising of one can enhance the prosperity of all. Think of an old-fashioned marketplace. Its attraction is VARIETY. If a seller of carpets drives the sellers of other products away--food sellers, sellers of baskets, cloth, etc.--in a bid to monopolize the customer base, they may actually harm their own business as well as the other businesses and the economy in general. How often do you want to buy ONLY a carpet? And how more likely is it that you WILL get the notion of buying a carpet and actually do it, if you are in an enjoyable environment with many things for sale and a place to stop and have a coffee or lunch?

It's common sense. Business feeds business--even businesses selling the same thing. Artificial and powermongering restrictions on "the marketplace" harm business and ultimately crash economies. The more variety the better. The more sellers the better. The more jobs and thus paying customers the better.

What I don't quite understand about this article is why this seems to be "news" to Guardian's business reporter--that ADDING Cuba to the Caribbean travel trade, or rather lifting current U.S. restrictions upon it, will enhance everybody's travel business. Maybe it's because he didn't feel free to directly attack the U.S. embargo as anti-democratic, anti-free marketplace, anti-business and just plain stupid? He had to find somebody to state the obvious--that NO EMBARGO will enhance business.