Flight from Cuba: Havana Courts Expat Investors as Airlines and Hotels Retreat

Foreign companies are fleeing Cuba in droves as Washington’s maximum-pressure campaign forces a reckoning, with Air Canada suspending flights indefinitely and Spanish hotel giants Meliá and Iberostar winding down operations. In a striking countermove, President Miguel Díaz-Canel is making an unprecedented pitch to Cuban investors at home and abroad—long kept at arm’s length by the revolutionary government—to take over hotel management, a sign of the island’s deepening isolation and economic desperation.

Viewed from Washington, the squeeze is by design. The Trump administration combined sanctions against the military-run GAESA conglomerate, which controls swathes of the economy, with an ultimatum: cease dealings with Cuban entities by 5 June or face reprisals. The measures have already frozen Visa and Mastercard transactions on the island, and a de facto oil embargo has choked fuel supplies, exacerbating prolonged blackouts and water shortages. Legal pressure is also mounting, with US prosecutors reviving a 1996 indictment against Raúl Castro for the shootdown of two civilian aircraft.

From Ottawa and Madrid, the business retreat has been stark. Air Canada, citing “political and economic uncertainty,” scrapped all routes after earlier planning only a seasonal suspension; Canadian tourists have long been a mainstay of Cuba’s sun-and-sand economy. Spanish hoteliers, once the backbone of the industry, have been forced by the sanctions’ extraterritorial reach to exit: Meliá will cease operations at 15 of its 34 properties, while Iberostar has also scaled back. European executives note that any link to US financial flows has become toxic, making continued presence untenable.

Havana’s response, as outlined by Díaz-Canel in an interview with Spanish outlet elDiario.es, is to explore “different business modalities” with Cubans willing to invest and manage hotels, alongside partners from countries not tied to the US dollar system. The offer extends to the diaspora, a community historically viewed with suspicion. Yet analysts in London and Miami doubt that the undercapitalised emigrant population can substitute for global brands, especially with tourism arrivals already cratering and the island’s broader economic activity paralysed by energy shortages.

Looking ahead, the economic vise shows no sign of loosening. As the exodus of foreign firms accelerates, Cuba’s ability to maintain even basic services dwindles, raising the prospect of a humanitarian crisis that could spur a fresh migratory wave—the very instability Washington claims it seeks to contain. The regime’s pivot to diaspora capital is unlikely to fill the void, leaving the island ever more dependent on allies like Russia and China, who are themselves navigating a fraught geopolitical landscape.