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Above: Santiago Corrada, president and CEO of Visit Tampa<br />
Right: Statue of Vicente Marinez Ybor<br />
Cuba.” In tourism, Tampa sees opportunity now in attracting<br />
visitors before and after their Cuba trips, “building on the historic<br />
and cultural ties between Cuba and Tampa,” said Santiago<br />
Corrada, president and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay, the destination<br />
marketer for Hillsborough County. Tampa Bay has been breaking<br />
tourism records for the past four years. In 2016, it hosted<br />
almost 22 million overnight visitors, nearly 19 million airport<br />
passengers, and 814,000 cruise passengers, said Corrada, also a<br />
Cuban-American.<br />
As flights and cruises to Cuba expand, Tampa can lure more<br />
visitors to its Cuba-related locales—especially Ybor City, the area<br />
developed by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and fellow cigarmakers<br />
from Cuba. Today the neighborhood is designated a National<br />
Historic Landmark District, featuring century-old brick factories<br />
and shops, restored wooden worker homes, and a captivating<br />
local history museum.<br />
In Ybor City, travelers can visit Cuba without a passport.<br />
That’s because the park honoring Cuban independence leader<br />
José Martí has been deeded to Cuba since the 1950s. It is the<br />
rarest of places: property in the United States owned by a foreign<br />
government that does not have an embassy or consulate on it. The<br />
park sits on land where Martí often stayed in the 1890s at the<br />
home of his friends, the Pedrosos.<br />
Short-term, some Tampa entrepreneurs have specific busi-<br />
74 CUBATRADE MARCH 2017
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