The Real Cuba News and Commentary

Edelweiss Air to cease Zurich–Havana flights in March 2025 reflecting decline in demand

Edelweiss Air (Edelweiss is a sister carrier of SWISS and a member of the Lufthansa Group) will discontinue its Zurich-Havana route from March 2025 due to declining demand and operational challenges at Havana’s José Martí International Airport.



  •     Final Flight: The last Zurich-Havana service will operate on 27 February 2025.
  •     Customer Options: Affected passengers will be contacted for rebooking on alternative routes or offered a full refund.
  •     Operational Challenges: An on-site evaluation revealed difficulties in ensuring reliable long-haul operations at Havana airport. Declining demand.

Edelweiss will continue weekly flights on this route until the suspension and regrets any inconvenience caused to its passengers.

(Source: Aviation 24)

Tourism amid power cuts and food shortages: Why does Cuba continue to invest in hotels?

Despite the fact that fewer and fewer visitors are traveling to the island and hotel occupancy has fallen, the government allocated almost 40% of its investments in 2024 to activities related to the industry


Tourists drive through Havana in a classic American car, in an archive photograph..

The bartender recalls the day when, while working in his cantina facing the Caribbean Sea, a German tourist ordered a fish fillet.

— “I don’t have any, sir. What I have is pork, beef, and chicken,” said the bartender, who won’t give his name because he’s not willing to lose his 25-year job at a hotel in Cayo Largo del Sur.

— “But you have all that sea and no fish?” the tourist replied.

On other occasions, the bartender has had to come up with a way to satisfy a customer. There was the case of a tourist who asked for a Cuba Libre, one of the most famous Cuban cocktails, made with white rum, Coca Cola, and lemon. If any of the above ingredients are missing, the bartender does not hold back: “I told him: ‘Look, I can’t make you a Cuba Libre, but I can make you something else.’ If I have lemon soda, I say that I am going to make an aphrodisiac drink that in my city is called Santo Libre. That is a lie, it is lemon soda with aged rum. But the customer accepts and I tell them: ‘Tomorrow, you tell me.’ Sometimes you solve the situation, but sometimes you can’t. Canadians are great beer drinkers and, if there is no beer, there is nothing to invent,” he says.

His hotel, a facility operated by the Gran Caribe group and the Blue Diamond company, is located in the Canarreos archipelago, a paradise in the southwest of Cuba. For him, there have been no better years than those between 2012 and 2015, when tourists arrived en masse at the hotel, on planes that left from Italy, Canada, or Germany and landed directly on the Cayo. Or American tourists, who reached a record number of 173,550 in 2014, the same year that former U.S. president Barack Obama announced the normalization of diplomatic relations with Havana.


People use their cell phones in the doorway of a Havana hotel during a power outage, in October 2024.

“Right now, those direct flights don’t exist. Tourists come from Havana, Varadero, or other places in Cuba,” says the worker, who regrets not having ever seen the no vacancies sign at the hotel again, as it was in its golden days, when the 600 rooms that the facility has were occupied.
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