Cuba Looks for Edge over Caribbean Rivals with Study of U.S. Tourists

The Cuban government isn’t waiting around for the U.S. Congress to lift the trade ban that would make travel to the island easier for Americans—it’s already analyzing the perceptions that American tourists and others have of its beaches and cities.

Naturally, the decision to reestablish relations between the two countries didn’t happen overnight, but it appears tourism was a key concern for Cuba’s government leading up to the historic announcement President Barack Obama made in mid-December.

Hugo Sanchez, COO of Socialvane, a social data analytics company based in Minorca, Spain, said his company signed a contract with Cuba in December just before Obama’s announcement to create a partnership between the Cuban Ministry of Tourism and his company.

The goal is to study the online perceptions American tourists have of the island’s hotels and destinations, see how Cuba’s online reputation compares to other islands as well as measure what different demographics of tourists are most interested in traveling to the island.

Sanchez said he and his colleagues traveled to the island just after the announcement was made in December to meet with Ministry of Tourism officials to outline what the partnership would involve between the government and company.

“It was easier than people can imagine during our initial talks with Cuba,” said Sanchez. “It was a pretty amazing experience because Internet access in Cuba was shoddy so we didn’t know what was really going on in the news and what people were saying about the U.S. and Cuba.”

“This kind of analytical mindset isn’t new to [Cuba] and the [Ministry of Tourism analytics team] existed long before we showed up and regularly reported their data to the government. What we are doing is helping Cuba monitor almost the whole Caribbean region to understand the trends and travel dynamics that underlie it and this is helping Cuban authorities to optimize the important investments it should make in its travel industry.”

Source: Yahoo Travel