Canadian tourists reconsider Cuba vacations as blackouts cause food, fuel shortages

Some Canadian tourists are reconsidering vacations in Cuba as the Caribbean island continues to cope with power outages and shortages of basic necessities.

Cuba’s national electrical grid first crashed on Friday, before Hurricane Oscar’s arrival, after the island’s largest power plant shut down and fuel shortages sent the system into disarray, leaving 10 million people without electricity.

Cuba’s grid has fully or partly failed three times since, underscoring the precarious state of the country’s infrastructure and putting many Cubans on edge, who already must deal with regular shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Amid the chaos, Canadian travel agencies have seen an uptick in cancellations, but industry representatives said they continue to book reservations for the popular destination as travellers expect the situation to get back to normal.

Serge Malaison, chair of the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA), Quebec section, an industry group, said the crisis has affected business.

“We have cancellations now because of what is in the news, people are very stressed,” said Mr. Malaison, who also co-founded the Voyages Centaure travel agency. “We have customers currently in Cuba that are trying to come back.”

In an interview Tuesday, he said Cuban authorities and staff are doing great work, but that tourists might still be affected by outages where power generators are shut off during the day or because of the impact of the crisis on activities outside resorts.

More than one million Canadians visited Cuba every year before the pandemic, according to the federal government. Mr. Malaison said there are still thousands of tourists from Quebec alone going every month.

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) posted a travel advisory for the island, urging visitors to “exercise a high degree of caution in Cuba due to shortages of basic necessities including food, medicine and fuel.” GAC also recommended people “avoid non-essential travel to the provinces of Guantanamo and Holguin due to the impact of Hurricane Oscar.”

Helen Pike, a retiree from St. John’s, is staying at a Varadero resort, in the western part of Cuba. “Things aren’t too, too bad,” she said in an interview Tuesday. The air conditioning and the ATMs are out, and the internet is spotty, Ms. Pike said, but “everything else is relatively good.”

Her hotel, the Sol Varadero Beach resort, has experienced only a few short outages of up to 15 minutes since Friday, she said. They still have hot food and water. Guests from other resorts that lost power have been transferred there. “We’ve been relatively lucky.”

Her flight back is scheduled for Monday. “I’m not that nervous right now, but the longer things go on, you just hope that people don’t get desperate,” Ms. Pike said, alluding to the recent protests. “We’re really not suffering, compared to what the locals are going through.”

Romanna Kachmarsky, director of Bucket List Travelers, a Toronto-based travel agency, said she also saw cancellations, but the impact on tourists already there has been marginal.

Her travel agents “are fully aware of the situation and they have cancelled a few people who were supposed to leave,” Ms. Kachmarsky said. Suppliers of tours with which her agency does business, such as Sunwing, have offered refunds or date changes free of charge, she said.

But according to reports she received from clients in Holguin, on the eastern part of the island, resort generators have limited outages to a couple of hours.

Ms. Kachmarsky said that otherwise, it’s “business as usual” regarding reservations. “I’m booking Varadero right now, actually,” she said Tuesday. “A golf tournament for guys. They’re assuming it’s not going to last long.”

Cubans have for months endured prolonged blackouts of 10 to 20 hours a day across much of the country, spoiling food and complicating access to fuel and water.

The government and independent experts say the grid, long near collapse, has reached a critical point as obsolete infrastructure deteriorates and fuel runs short.

Cuba blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as sanctions instituted by former president Donald Trump for difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants.

The U.S. has denied any role in the grid failures.

Cuban allies Russia, Mexico and Venezuela have all cut exports to the island in recent months.

With a report from Reuters