Dionne Rose, Business Reporter

The Nacional hotel in Havana, Cuba, built in the 1930s, is considered a jewel of Cuban engineering. Its walls are adorned with images of some of Hollywood's biggest stars and heads of state who have stayed there, including Jamaica's former governor general, Sir Howard Cooke. It was declared a national monument in 1998.- File

Cuba has had limited success in attracting foreign capital to its tourism industry and while visitors to its shores have been on the increase, Columbian academic Mauriciode Miranda says the Spanish-speaking country has not been able to attract high-end business.

Still, Cuba has carved out a multibillion-dollar business from foreign travelers to its shores, data collated by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) shows.

In 2001, the most current data available, Cuba's tourism Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was 38.9 million pesos, said Miranda, chair of the economics department at the Unversidad Javieriana in Cali.

But its earnings from tourism in 2007 hit US$7.5 billion according to WTO figures.

Cuba had some four million tourist visits in the year, up from 3.7 million in 2006, whose average spend was US$1,875 per person over a 4.2 day stay.

Package tourists

"Cuban tourism is not high-yielding or high-spending. For the largest part they are package tourists, they come for the sun, sand and sea - the typical visit," said Miranda, speaking at last week's conference on 'Cuba and its Neighbours', hosted by think tank CaPRI at the University of the West Indies in Kingston.

Its hospitality sector has 69,000 rooms on sale but was only able to fill 66.7 per cent of them, according to the WTO.

Miranda pointed out that Cuba has good conditions to attract FDIs, such as a labour force with a high level of education, good capacity of learning and high technical academic preparation.

But there are also negatives, he adds - the country's dual monetary system, the non-existence of acapital market and the difficulties of foreign companies having access to Cuba's domestic market.

"It is because of all of these restrictions and limitations that we have seen a rather limited role of foreign direct investments as a contribution to Cuba's gross domestic product," said Miranda.

Cuban tourism employs 138,000 directly and another 130,000 indirectly.

dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com