The hotelier canadiense Blue Diamond Resortsto which the Cuban Government exclusively handed over the administration of your tourist destination South Key Largo, announced that Havana also granted them an import license that allows them to control what enters that island territory south of Cuba.
In its first face-to-face meeting in more than two years, the Sunwing Travel Group, owner of Blue Diamond Resorts, held the Sunwing Loves Cuba event, in which it provided some details of how it plans to manage the 11 properties on the islet, which total 1,348 bedrooms.
“Cuba is a very important destination for us and we have grown phenomenally over the years”said Eric Rodriguez, executive vice president of strategic partnerships for Sunwing Travel Group.
“This, in addition to the growth of Blue Diamond Resorts, has given us a privileged position by allowing us to take Key Largo completely”quoted the specialized media Travel Trade Caribbean.
According to Rodriguez, exclusive import license will make products such as peanut butter, Nutella, and ketchup available at resorts, which has not always been the case. This, she said, “will allow us to control quality within the hotels.”
“There are many synergies that can be exploited. Instead of having ten different butcher shops, you can have a centralized one and you can have many common products that are centralized, instead of everyone doing it on their own. It’s the economies of scale, it’s the right to import, and being able to control quality is a great thing,” the official celebrated.
Blue Diamond Resorts, Sunwing’s hotel management company, which brings tourists from Canada to Cuba, is now the second hotel chain in number of rooms in Cubafollowing Meliá and ahead of Iberostar, both from Spain.
Mohamad Fawzi, general director in Cuba of Blue Diamond Resorts, said regarding the exploitation of its facilities that “at the moment we are around 50% in all our properties, and for the winter we are looking for a very good occupancy of 90%”.
For his part, Rodríguez insisted on taking destiny as a new territory: “We have never had a destination managed by a hotel company in Cuba. This is the first.”
Also, the new administrators of Cayo Largo del Sur seem to have dealt a definitive blow to the ETECSA telecommunications monopoly, since another decision they made was to eliminate scratch cards to connect to the Internet used by Cubans and foreign visitors. In the territory that they will manage they are going to impose WiFi, they advanced.
According to the report, following the end of the health protocols imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, flights to Key Largo International Airport from Canada will be easy for Canadians. Starting in November there will be three direct flights from Canada, with departures from Toronto, Montreal and Quebec.
Last May, the Cuban Ministry of Tourism made the unprecedented announcement: Blue Diamond Resorts, with 21 hotels on the island, will exclusively manage the entire tourist area of Cayo Largo del Surclose to the Isle of Youth, from the high season of winter 2022-2023.
Although the administration of the key will be in conjunction with the Cuban state company Gran Caribe, This will involve the management of the hotel and non-hotel facilities of the isletin which the Cuban authorities want to achieve an increase in foreign tourism.
Blue Diamond, founded in 2010, is considered the fastest growing hotel group in the Caribbeanand has facilities in Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, Antigua, Costa Rica, Barbados, Tobago and Granada, although none of them have as many hotels as Cuba.
So far it manages 15,500 rooms in ten countries.
