LatinNews Daily - 10 April 2024

*Cuba has received 66,887 Russian tourists in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the 32,224 registered during the same period last year, according to Cristina León, a tourism official at the Cuban embassy in Russia. León added that the rise was due to a greater number of flights between Moscow and Cuba. Last month, Cuba’s Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda told Russian state news agency Tass that the country expects to receive over 200,000 Russian tourists this year, a figure that he hopes will reach 500,000 “in the short term”. Also last month García Granda stated that Havana is encouraging the use of Russian MIR bank cards, with more than 20,000 payment terminals having been set up across the capital, to further promote tourism from Russia. Tass also cites data from the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (Ator) which shows that 184,819 Russian citizens visited Cuba in 2023, 3.4 times the number for 2022 and well above the pre-coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic high of 178,000.