CUBA: Reverse Tourism

Whatever Habaneros wanted—rest, fun, comfort, or bargain shopping—Miami had. A combination of inflated prices in Cuba plus fast, cheap air service had launched a boom in northbound tourist travel; Havana, long celebrated as a tourist spot in its own right, since last spring has sent some 50,000 tourists to Florida.*

Havana travelers show little interest in the crowded and expensive Miami winter season. The Cuban season starts in the spring, hits a peak in midsummer (30,000 in June, July, August and September), ends this week. During the summer, Cubans joke that Biscayne Boulevard is merely an extension of Havana’s Prado; Cuban business kept a record 225 of Miami Beach’s 338 hotels open all this year.

Northward Ho. By this season’s end, there were few upper or middle-class Cubans who had not visited Florida or were not planning a visit. Other travelers from Latin America had joined the northward trek, especially from Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil, but three out of four of Miami’s southern tourists were Cubans.

Shopping was the prime lure. Import duties and local mark-up boost Cuban retail prices from 30% to 50% over U.S. levels. Many a canny Habanero found that he and his wife could buy a year’s wardrobe in Miami and save enough to pay the airplane fare ($34.50 round trip) and vacation expenses. Havana merchants groused, but succeeded only in getting Miami stores to leave the prices out of their advertisements in Cuban newspapers.

Promised Land. Not all tourists were concerned with shopping alone. The Havana weekly Bohemia added a social note.

“Are you a man and going alone to Miami . . .? Don’t worry. You’ll have no trouble meeting an attractive American girl, avid for company and distraction. But don’t think you are in Cuba. After the dance, the drinks and the laughs, she will tell you she’s sleepy . . . and there ends the night of adventure. Perhaps there are persons who have better luck, but that’s the rule.”

Not all Cuban visitors were short-term tourists. Miami has a permanent Cuban colony of 5,000. Havana interests have also invested heavily in real estate and hotels. Cuban syndicates have bought into the big Everglades and Shoremede Hotels; the Royalton and America (also Cuban-owned) print their menus in Spanish. Reported Havana Newsman Miguel de Marcos: “Cuba has conquered Miami without firing a shot.”

* U.S. tourist traffic to Havana in 1947: 116,000