More than 2.2 million tourists visited Cuba in 2022, an increase of almost 400% compared to the previous year, which was still marked by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, the Cuban Statistics Office (ONEI) said on Thursday.
From January “to December, 2,277,978 travelers were welcomed, an increase of 396.9% over the same period of 2021,” the ONEI said in a statement published on its website Thursday evening.
Among these tourists were 1.6 million foreigners, the text specifies, an increase of 452% compared to 2021.
Canadians represent the largest contingent of international travelers with 532,000 people, followed by Cubans abroad (330,000) and Americans (100,000).
Cuba, which has a population of 11.1 million, relies on tourism as a source of foreign exchange to revive its economy, which has hardly been mitigated by inflation, the consequences of the pandemic and the tightening of American sanctions under Donald Trump (2017-2021) by his successor Joe Biden.
The Cuban government originally expected 2.5 million tourists in 2022 before revising its target downward to 1.7 million in October.
In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 4.2 million tourists visited the Caribbean’s largest island. In the same year, tourism brought Cuba $2.6 billion in revenue.