The Spanish hotel group Meliá announced on Tuesday that it would put an end to all of its activities in Cuba from Friday in the face of “significant difficulties” in operating on the communist island, under increasing pressure from the United States.
The latest American sanctions make “impossible, de facto and de jure, minimal operational stability” of activities, justifies the group in a press release sent to the Spanish stock market watchdog (CNMV).
The company is, however, working to “guarantee an orderly transition” to have the “minimum impact possible” on “employees, suppliers and customers”, specifies Meliá.
At the beginning of June, the group announced that it was putting an end to the activities of 15 of its 34 hotels in Cuba (14,000 rooms in total), those managed with the military-economic conglomerate Gaesa, in Washington’s sights.
This decision came a month after US President Donald Trump signed a decree imposing a new package of sanctions which notably threaten the activities of foreign companies collaborating with the Cuban state.
Meliá was the first foreign hotel group to establish itself in Cuba after the late President Fidel Castro opened the country to international tourism in order to emerge from the crisis caused by the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1991.
In addition to the American embargo in force since 1962, Washington has imposed an oil blockade on Cuba since January, having since then authorized the arrival of only one Russian tanker.
In this context, other foreign companies have also disengaged from Cuba, including a mining company and a bank.
