Arturo Sanchez Martinez. Delegate of Cuba’s Tourism Minister to the province of Holguin

Coming from Islazul Company, where he cut his entrepreneurial teeth as manager of El Bosque Hotel for two years, Mr. Martinez went on to manage 434-room resorts of up to three extra-hotel facilities, including such hometown flagship lodgings as Pernik, El Bosque, the Mayabe Watchtower, Miraflores (Moa) and recreational centers like Pancho’s Pub, Nocturno Cabaret and the Pico Cristal Compound.

In 2003, after seven and a half years at the helm of Islazul Holguin, he talked the front office into handing his Managerial Improvement File to a state-run watchdog group. Thus, the Islazul Holguin Office became the country’s first hotel chain ever to have its accounting books certified.

The new delegate is now facing a new challenger: to keep up the good work that has turned Holguin into the island nation’s third-largest tourist circuit. In all, the province counts on 4,780 rooms, and as many as 1,475 of them were added in 2003: 944 accommodations at the Playa Pesquero Hotel, plus 531 rooms at the Occidental Playa Turquoise Resort, for a staggering 45.3 percent growth in a single year.

The province came in for 184,609 travelers last year, the biggest chunk of them from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Switzerland that combined for a 30.7 percent increment from 2002. In the same breath, revenues soared a blistering 39 percent, while gross earnings were up –and hold on to your hats- 74 percent.

In 2003, Holguin’s travel industry implemented a successful cost-cutting policy and increased average earnings per tourist. It also chalked up higher average stays per sunbather and way above 90 percent of vacationers was pleased with the service. In that same year, the Holguin destination grabbed the Quality Prize bestowed by Cuba’s Tourism Convention, plus a similar award handed by the Cubanacan Group for its Cubanacan Travel and Cubanacan Nautical offices on the premises.

For the new tourism delegate in the province of Holguin, the key to success here lies in the place’s potentials as a travel destination, and his perennial dissatisfaction with cost-cutting and spending policies, let alone the fact that he never seems to get enough from his marketing efforts.