Havana - \ (AFP) - The number of foreign tourists in Cuba so far this year has reached six times more than in the same period in 2021, but it is still below the levels recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic, the government said Saturday. .

Officials hope that Russian tourists will flow in when the number of flights returns to normal, that is, to what it was before flights were canceled due to the repercussions of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.

The National Statistics Office reported that 834,891 tourists visited the island between January and July inclusive, compared to 141,293 tourists in the first seven months of 2021.

International tourism constitutes the second largest economic activity in Cuba, but travel restrictions due to the pandemic and the ongoing US embargo caused numbers to decline in 2020 and 2021.

The total number of foreign tourists decreased from 4.2 million in 2019 to almost 1 million in 2020.

But after the outbreak of Covid-19 has been better controlled, the authorities in Cuba hope to receive 2.5 million tourists this year.
Cuba depends, in particular, on the recovery of tourism, thanks to Russian tourists, whose number exceeded the number of Canadian tourists in 2020 and 2021, after Canada was the largest source of tourists in Cuba.

Last week, the Cuban ambassador to Moscow, Julio Garmendia, said in an interview with the Izvestia daily that there are efforts to return air traffic to normal levels by winter.

"We know that the Russians are again yearning for a vacation in Cuba, and the Cuban people are waiting for them with special hospitality," he added, according to the official Cubadebate blog.

ONS figures indicate that Canada tops the list of countries from which tourists come to Cuba, with 258,896 Canadians having visited Cuba by the end of July.