Spanish resort chain Meliá has joined a rising record of firms with long-standing operations in Cuba which can be withdrawing from or limiting their enterprise on the island after the U.S. introduced new sanctions whereas sustaining an oil embargo.
Meliá will stop operations at 15 of the 34 hotels it manages on the island, based on state web site Cubadebate, dealing a blow to Cuba’s important tourism sector, which has struggled since its 2019 peak.
The report on Wednesday mentioned Meliá’s resolution was based mostly on “a way of company duty and exterior elements which have considerably affected the operation, legality and safety of those institutions.”
The choice was introduced Might 26, simply weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an govt order increasing sanctions towards the island. Many of the sanctions focused Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a enterprise conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. The U.S. says GAESA is a menace to its nationwide safety.
The chief order freezes the belongings of international firms, seizes their accounts in the USA and prohibits journey by their shareholders, buyers and workers — just about eliminating their exercise within the U.S. monetary system.
GAESA, a Cuban conglomerate created within the Nineties, owns a variety of companies, from automobile leases and retail shops to transportation firms. It’s Meliá’s associate in resort administration by means of certainly one of its subsidiaries, Gaviota.
Meliá didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Newest blow for tourism sector
The resort chain is certainly one of Cuba’s most essential companions in its important tourism sector. Till its partial withdrawal, it operated about 14,000 rooms.
Spanish and Canadian companies are the most important buyers in Cuba’s resort sector, mentioned Lee Schlenker, a analysis affiliate on the Quincy Institute’s International South program, a Washington think-tank.
“With the dearth of worldwide tourism, the gas shortages, and simply the broader decline since COVID … I am certain that these firms can be rethinking their operations in Cuba with main implications for the individuals of Cuba, not simply GAESA,” he mentioned. “There are literally thousands of Cubans who work in these hotels.”
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A number of of the hotels that Meliá deserted in idyllic locations just like the resorts of Varadero, Cayo Santa María and Jardines del Rey “had been already closed and inactive attributable to vitality issues and the drop in demand in Cuba,” based on Cubadebate.
Cuba’s authorities has blamed the U.S. vitality blockade for extended blackouts, water shortages, provide issues, deficiencies within the health-care system and disruptions to each day life.
‘It should have an effect on us’
Those that work in Cuba’s crumbling tourism sector lamented Meliá’s announcement.
“It should have an effect on us, our households, and everybody concerned in tourism. Our pay and earnings rely on this,” mentioned Erich López, a driver of a inexperienced Nineteen Fifties Dodge who has been driving for twenty years to assist his household.
For Carlos Luis Carbonel, a 62-year-old parking attendant who works in entrance of the large Meliá Cohiba resort in Havana, the state of affairs “goes to be a blow.”
“That is horrible for everybody: for tour guides, for parking attendants, for resort staff, for everybody,” he mentioned.
Different main resort chains, together with Canadian-owned Royalton and Spain’s Iberostar, have restricted or suspended operations in Cuba up to now week.
Tourism in Cuba, which reached a peak of 4.3 million guests in 2019, noticed a big drop within the variety of vacationers arriving within the first quarter of this yr, 48 per cent decrease than in the identical interval in 2025.
Solely 298,000 vacationers arrived in Cuba in January, February and March, in contrast with 573,300 worldwide guests throughout the identical interval final yr, based on authorities information.
Cuba struggles to breathe
On Wednesday, the large and iconic signal of the Royalton Paseo del Prado resort on the entrance of Previous Havana was eliminated, as confirmed by The Related Press throughout a go to. In the meantime, the 500-room Iberostar Choice — additionally recognized as Tower Ok — essentially the most trendy and opulent of the hotels slated to open in 2025, standing over 150 metres tall, has remained closed for days.
Airways together with World2Fly, Air France and Iberia have cancelled flights to and from Cuba.
Additionally on Wednesday, Cuba’s Central Financial institution introduced that Visa and MasterCard operations on the island can be suspended following the termination of relationships between international entities and FINCIMEX S.A., a Cuba-based company affiliated with GAESA.
Final month, Canadian miner Sherritt Worldwide Corp. signed a non-binding settlement with Gillon Capital LLC, a household workplace linked to a former Trump adviser, to promote its stake in a mining enterprise in Cuba.
In late January, Trump threatened tariffs on any nation that sells or provides oil to Cuba, as his administration pressures for a change in its political system and authorities. The transfer has deepened a disaster attributable to seven a long time of U.S. sanctions.
Peter Kornbluh, Cuba specialist with the Nationwide Safety Archive in Washington, D.C., mentioned the U.S. indictment of former Cuban chief Raúl Castro on Wednesday could possibly be seen as a ‘quantum step’ towards navy aggression towards the Latin American nation.
Whereas U.S. and Cuban officers held talks earlier this yr, tensions have risen.
In late Might, former president Raúl Castro was charged in a U.S. indictment for his alleged function within the downing of two civilian plane operated by Miami-based exiles in 1996 in Cuban waters.
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