Cuba's climate is tropical and moderated by trade winds. The dry season lasts from November to April and the rainy season from May to October. Cuba makes maritime claims that include a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles (22 km) and an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles (370 km).
Cuba is located 80 km (50 mi) west of Haiti across the Windward Passage, 140 km (87 mi) south of the Bahamas, 145 km (90 mi) south of Florida, 210 km (130 mi) east of Mexico, and 146 km (91 mi) north of Jamaica.
Cuba is the largest country by land area in the Caribbean. Its main island is the seventeenth-largest island in the world by land area. The island raises between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. It is bordered to the north by the Straits of Florida, to the north-east by Nicholas Channel and the Old Bahamas Channel. The southern part is bounded by the Windward Passage and the Cayman Trench, while the south-west lies in the Caribbean Sea. To the west, it reaches to the Yucatan Channel, and the north-west is open to the Gulf of Mexico.
More than 4,000 islands and cays are found in the surrounding sea and bays. The southern coast includes such archipelagos as Jardines de la Reina and the Canarreos. The northern-eastern shore is lined by the Sabana-Camaguey Archipelago, that includes Jardines del Rey and is composed of approximately 2,517 cays and isles. The Colorados Archipelago is developed on the north-western coast.
Tourism in Cuba attracts over 2 million people a year, and is one of the main sources of revenue for the island. With its favorable climate, beaches, colonial architecture and distinct cultural history, Cuba has long been an attractive destination for tourists. In the first part of the 20th century Cuba benefited from its close proximity to the United States. As relations between Cuba and the United States deteriorated rapidly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the island became cut off from its traditional market by an embargo and travel ban imposed on U.S. citizens visiting Cuba, and the industry declined to record low levels within two years.
Following the collapse of Cuba's chief trading partner the Soviet Union, and the resulting economic crisis known as the Special Period, Cuba embarked on a major program to bolster its tourist industry in order to bring in much needed finance to the island. Schemes to encourage visitors meant that by the late 1990s, tourism surpassed Cuba's traditional export industry, sugar, as the nation's leading source of revenue. Visitors come primarily from Canada and Europe and tourist areas are highly concentrated around Varadero Beach, Cayo Coco, the beach areas north of Holguin, and Havana. The impact on Cuba's socialist society and economy has been significant, leading to complaints that the state has fostered a form of divisive wealth apartheid on the island.
Cuba has long been a popular attraction for tourists. Between 1915 and 1930, Havana hosted more tourists than any other location in the Caribbean. The influx was due in large part to Cuba's proximity to the United States, where restrictive prohibition on alcohol and other pastimes stood in stark contrast to the island's traditionally relaxed attitude to leisure pursuits. Such tourism became Cuba's third largest source of foreign currency, behind the two dominant industries of sugar and tobacco
A combination of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the end of prohibition, and the second world war severely dampened Cuba's tourist industry, and it wasn't until the 1950s that numbers began to return to the island in any significant force. During this period, American organized crime came to dominate the leisure and tourist industries, a modus operandi outlined at the infamous Havana Conference of 1946. By the mid-1950s Havana became one of the main markets and the favourite route for the narcotics trade to the United States. Despite this, tourist numbers grew steadily at a rate of 8% a year and Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas".
Hotel Nacional in Havana. The hotel's guestlist includes Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway, and also played host to the infamous Havana Conference in 1946Immediately upon becoming President of Cuba after the Cuban revolution of 1959, Manuel Urrutia ordered the closing of many bars and gambling halls associated with prostitution and the drug trade, thus effectively ending Cuba's image as a hedonistic escape. A new governmental body, the National Institute of the Tourism Industry (INTUR), was established to encourage more tourism; taking over hotels, clubs, and beaches making them available to the general public at low rates. Tourist board chief Carlos Almonia announced a program of huge investment in hotels and the creation of a new airport. But fears of Cuba's post-revolutionary status amongst Americans, who constituted 8 out of 10 of visitors, meant a rapid decrease in travel to the island.
In January 1961, as relations between the nations deteriorated, tourism travel to Cuba was declared by the U.S. State Department to be contrary to U.S. foreign policy and against the national interest. Tourism that year dropped to a record low of a mere 4180, forcing a dramatic downsizing of Cuba's tourist plans. Visitors to Cuba during the 1960s, 70s and 80s were comparatively rare. The number of tourists to the island did increase slowly, but it wasn't until 1989 that they were to equal pre-Revolutionary numbers.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused a crisis in the Cuban economy. The Soviets were Cuba's chief trading partner, and had effectively sheltered Cuba's sugar industry with large subsidies for 30 years. The lack of economic diversification during this period, and the sudden loss of key markets sent the country into a deep economic depression known in Cuba as the Special Period. The crisis precipitated an urgent need to find new avenues of national income.
Policies were drawn up to satisfy the growing tourist markets of Canada and Europe with an aim to replace Cuba's reliance on the sugar industry and gain much needed foreign currency rapidly. A new Ministry of Tourism was created in 1994, and the Cuban state invested heavily in tourist facilities. Between 1990 and 2000, more than $3.5 billion was invested in the tourist industry. The number of rooms available to international tourists grew from 12,000 to 35,000, and the country received a total of 10 million visitors over that period. By 1995 the industry had surpassed sugar as Cuba's chief earner.
Today, Cuba welcomes travelers from around the world, and especially Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France and Mexico. In recent years, more than 600,000 Canadians, 200,000 British, and 114,000 Germans have visited Cuba annually. Each year, thousands of Americans visit Cuba, even though the official U.S. trade policy usually does not permit travel there. According to TIME Magazine (May 11, 2007), 20,000 to 30,000 Americans illegally travel to Cuba every year. Americans usually reach Cuba via flights from Toronto, Montreal or Cancun. Cuban immigration officers do not stamp U.S. passports so Americans can keep their visits private.
