Traveling to Cuba

[AlterEgo]

well, we can also consider a totally non communist Haiti as well vs Singapore... or compare some totalitarian Persian Gulf emirate/sultanate/you name it vs USA (Appalachia is still here)...

[Justinr]

Living on a tourist-economy island (Mallorca), I can assure anyone interested that it's a bad idea for the indigenous people.

You end up a one-trick pony and you lose everything else. Next to tourism, the big thing was the construction of apartments, most of them for sale to holiday maker owners. We now have overload. I have had my place on the market a year - I shot the pix last November - and though it's a damned good apartment in a fine area, there hasn't been a single viewer. Many estate agents have bitten the dust; others pay no salaries, just commission (5% today compared with around 1% in the UK). You have to inflate your price just to pay the agency fees, further putting your place out of reach of many. Many restaurants that had building workers flooding in to lunch every day now struggle with a few foreigners like me, or local retired people. Every year bars fold and hotels close early where they would stay open all year.

I hope the Cubans have the sense to hang onto ownership of their farms... accommodation for tourists should be new-builds on land that robs nobody of their own domestic places.

Does it help those locals who sell land? Well, the farmers here who sold out in the 70s/80s could never buy their lands back today. Their families will never have those desirable fincas with added pools...

Other businesses? We had a b¡g deal in shoe production at one time. Gone. Ditto small boats. Fishing? Really?

Tourism is one bitch as a provider of income. It invented the false smile even before Hollywood. Come to think of it, whores and holidays seem to sound great together. Must be a song there too.

Rob C

Ditto Ireland, except that the trade was building rather than tourism.

[AlterEgo]

Ditto Ireland, except that the trade was building rather than tourism.

tax tricks too

[Justinr]

tax tricks too

And rampant political corruption, except that is still thriving with a certain gentleman running around trying to rewrite history, shame that his IPO failed to the general mirth of all those who aren't in his pay, the contemptible little plebs!

[hjulenissen]

...You end up a one-trick pony and you lose everything else....

What you are describing is a "mono-economy" and possibly "Dutch Disease". If your country is mainly selling oil, then you become very dependant on oil prices (and being able to pump the stuff up). I don't see how most of it relates specifically to tourism, though.

I am (in this context) more concerned with what happens to the "social glue" when there is a massive shift in control and wealth. One might say that Cubans are not particulary lucky with the current state, so things can only get better, but the same could be said for certain African and middle-eastern nations a couple of years ago as well.

When I was in Cuba some 13 years ago and told that I was a failed musician turned engineer, people looked shocked at me: how could I be so stupid. As a musician you had every opportunity at earning a decent salary, at going abroad and doing something that was generally priced in their culture. As an engineer you'd be stuck at a low pay government job.

-h