CubaTrade-May2017-Flipbook

have been approved; all will be four-night voyages that include an
overnight stay in Havana as well as a stop at Great Stirrup Cay,
Norwegian’s private island in the Bahamas. Prices to Cuba start
at only $699 per person.
Finally, on April 20, Royal Caribbean International’s Empress
of the Seas made company history when the 27-year-old
liner’s 1,602 passengers departed the Port of Miami, bound for a
five-night inaugural sailing to the island.
Mark Tamis, Royal Caribbean’s senior vice-president of
hotel operations, told Cruise Critic his line is “is extremely proud”
to have begun serving Cuba, and that “it’s super exciting to be
offering our adventure-seeking guests of all ages the opportunity
to discover the rich culture of this island nation… and meet its
people first-hand.”
Also planning Cuba cruises: Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven
Seas Cruises, and Azamara Club Cruise.
For now, Carnival is the most expensive cruise option to
Cuba—an irony considering its brands generally cater to budget-conscious
travelers. Fathom began advertising its seven-day
Cuba cruises aboard the Adonia starting at $2,990 per person—
almost double the $1,540 and up it was charging for similar
voyages to the Dominican Republic.
“The Adonia is a smaller ship, with different economies of
scale,” Israel explained. “Only weeks before we started operating,
OFAC required that any American passenger going on a
people-to-people trip had to buy [land programs] as part of their
tour package. So the normal cruise price became more expensive....
Shortly after we began operating, that requirement fell.”
First mover: Carnival's Fathom-line cruise ship Adonia arriving in Havana
From Carnival’s point of view, 700 or so passengers times 26
sailings a year equal 18,200 guests—far less than 1 percent of the
12 million passengers expected to cruise with the world’s largest
cruise-ship conglomerate this year.
“One 700-passenger ship going once a week to Cuba is not
much for us at all, but it’s the beginning of a long relationship
that may last forever,” Israel said. “And being first gave us a PR
boost our company never had. We were on the front pages of
hundreds of newspapers around the world.”
LONG TIME COMING
Planning for Cuba began in 1996, when Carnival bought a
50 percent stake in Italy’s Costa Cruises, which had finished
renovating Havana’s cruise terminal only 10 months before. Yet
because of the embargo, Carnival had no choice but to abandon
Costa’s Cuba operations. Israel quietly set up a “Cuba committee”
to scout out opportunities as bilateral relations improved under
the Clinton administration, then worsened sharply under Clinton’s
successor, George W. Bush.
Further momentum had to wait until President Obama’s Dec.
17, 2014, surprise announcement that the United States and Cuba
would restore diplomatic ties and open embassies in each other’s
capitals. Even so, the Fortune 500 giant (2016 revenues: $16.4 billion)
was not about to wade into the contentious embargo debate.
“We have never met with anybody in Congress to discuss
Cuba. We are not lobbying for any change in policy,” says Israel.
But when Obama announced the policy shift in December of
Photo by Yaniel Tolentino
2014, he says, “We were ready.” Once regulations were issued in
January 2015, Carnival immediately applied for a permit to offer
Cuba cruises from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces the embargo. That
process took about three months from beginning to end.
Next on the agenda was applying to the Cuban government
for permission to bring cruise ships to the island—a concept Fidel
Castro had always opposed. In a 2005 speech, he famously complained
that these “floating diversions visit countries to leave their
trash, their empty cans and papers, for a few miserable cents.”
Fidel is now gone, and his brother Raúl has said little publicly
about the cruise-ship industry. Just to be safe, said Israel, “it
very quickly dawned on us that maybe a combination of a smaller
ship and socially responsible cruising would be a good match.
We knew Cuba didn’t get a lot of cruise-ship passengers and that
they were concerned about big ships. We thought this would be
the smartest thing to do, and in retrospect, I can tell you we did
absolutely the right thing.”
Israel said Carnival began promoting its Fathom cruises
even before the required Cuban government approvals, with
the understanding that full refunds would be given in the event
those approvals failed to materialize. In the end, that wasn’t
necessary. Cuba signed off on the cruises, and on March 20, 2016,
Obama—in the first visit to Havana by any sitting president in
88 years—declared that Carnival would begin cruising to Cuba
shortly; he also announced that memos of understanding had
been reached with Starwood Hotels and General Electric.
“After he finished his speech, we were asked to come on
stage,” recalled Israel, who met Obama that day. “We were the
only ones to sign an actual agreement, and we issued a press
release minutes later.”
As thrilling as that moment was, it didn’t compare to the
Adonia’s arrival in Cuba on May 2, the day after the gleaming
white vessel departed the Port of Miami. “I had been in Havana
a dozen times, but the arrival of the first U.S. cruise ship after 54
years was an extraordinary lifetime experience,” Israel said.
THE IMPACT
How much cruising actually means for Cuba in dollar terms
is debatable. If all the cruise lines that have expressed interest
actually go through with their plans, the island could earn about
$80 million a year, according to the US-Cuba Trade and Economic
Council. John Kavulich, who runs the council, estimated
that the cruise companies pay the Cuban government an average
$500,000 per cruise, in addition to per-passenger expenditures.
According to the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association,
the average expenditure by a cruise passenger visiting a Carribbean
port is around $100; during the 2014-15 cruise season, the
average per passenger was $103.83.
Cuba may prove to be an exception, however. FCCA
President Michele L. Paige disputes the notion that U.S. cruise
passengers will crowd the streets of Havana by the thousands
without contributing anything to the Cuban economy. “Cruise
passengers and crew [to Cuba] spend more than any other
[cruise] tourist because they’re consuming, not relaxing. They’re
on an educational quest,” she said. “Under U.S. law, they have to
have a people-to-people educational experience.”
But noted Cuba travel expert Christopher Baker said he’s
“dismayed”—to put it politely—with the multitude of Americans
descending upon Havana in recent months. “The sheer volume
of passengers now roaming the colonial plazas of Habana Vieja
has diluted the ‘authentic’ Cuban experience,” Baker complained.
“Until now, the land-based, people-to-people programs that have
been the mainstay of U.S. visitation has drawn principally from a
high-income and highly educated demographic. These have proven
to be travelers who desire a deep cultural immersion in Cuba.”
By contrast, he said, “Carnival’s clientele is down-market and will
undoubtedly cheapen Cuba’s image.”
The situation has changed so radically, he claims, that entities
such as National Geographic Expeditions—which has run P2P
programs in Cuba for the past six years—is now looking for new
venues, “as the cruise-ship throngs are being bussed en masse to
artists’ studios and other places that previously offered a uniquely
Cuban experience.”
For now, Cuba's port infrastructure does not
allow our ships to go to other ports. Obviously,
once infrastructure improvements are made,
ships will call on other ports.
Giora Israel, Carnival's senior vice president
of global port and destination development
Israel, of course, sees things differently. Cuba, he says, is still a
relative virgin compared to far more accessible cruise-ship destinations
such as Cozumel, Mexico; St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands;
and Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The Adonia’s last sailing from Miami will be May 28,
which also coincides with the end of the Fathom brand itself.
It will be replaced in June with the 2,000-passenger Carnival
Paradise, which will begin Cuba voyages from its base in Tampa.
Eight four-day sailings to Cuba are scheduled, as are four
five-day sailings that include a stop in Cozumel or Key West.
The 10-deck Paradise, at 262 meters long and with a draft of
7.8 meters, is the largest-size ship that can currently berth in
Havana; the other ports in Cuba cannot accommodate a ship
its size.
“For now, Cuba’s port infrastructure does not allow our
ships to go to other ports. Obviously, once infrastructure improvements
are made, ships will call on these other ports,” Israel
explained.
Israel added that Carnival has identified “probably eight or
nine ports on the north and south coasts of Cuba that would
be appealing and interesting. We’re looking at all of them.” He
declined to elaborate further, except to say that more cruise announcements
are upcoming. H
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