Spanish hotel chain Meliá is significantly reducing its operations in Cuba, joining a growing list of companies limiting their presence on the island. This follows new US sanctions and an ongoing oil embargo, delivering a substantial blow to Cuba's vital tourism industry.
Meliá will cease managing 15 of its 34 hotels across the island, according to state-run Cubadebate. This deals a blow to Cuba’s vital tourism sector, which has plummeted since its 2018 peak. Meliá’s decision was based on "a sense of corporate responsibility and external factors that have significantly affected the operation, legality and security of these establishments."
The decision was announced on 26 May, weeks after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order expanding sanctions against the island. Most sanctions targeted Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, with the US asserting it was a threat to its national security. The executive order freezes foreign companies' assets, seizes their US accounts, and prohibits travel for shareholders, investors, and employees, effectively eliminating their activity in the US financial system.
GAESA, a Cuban conglomerate created in the 1990s, owns a wide range of businesses, from car rentals and retail stores to transportation companies. It is Meliá’s partner in hotel management through one of its subsidiaries, Gaviota. Meliá is one of Cuba’s most important partners in its vital tourism sector. Until its partial withdrawal, it operated some 14,000 rooms.
Spanish and Canadian firms are the biggest investors in Cuba’s hotel sector, noted Lee Schlenker, a research associate at the Quincy Institute’s Global South program, a Washington think tank. "With the lack of international tourism, the fuel shortages, and just the broader decline since COVID…I’m sure that these companies will be rethinking their operations in Cuba with major implications for the people of Cuba, not just GAESA," he said. "There are thousands of Cubans who work in these hotels." Several of the hotels that Meliá abandoned in idyllic destinations like the resorts of Varadero, Cayo Santa María and Jardines del Rey "were already closed and inactive due to energy problems and the drop in demand in Cuba," according to Cubadebate.
Other major hotel chains including Canadian-owned Royalton and Spain’s Iberostar have limited or suspended operations in Cuba in the past week. Tourism in Cuba, which reached a peak of 4.3 million visitors in 2019, saw a significant drop in the number of tourists arriving in the first quarter of this year, 48% lower than in the same period in 2025. Only 298,000 tourists arrived in Cuba in January, February and March, compared to 573,300 international visitors during the same period last year, according to government data.
