History of Hotels

Before going deeper into the origins of the Cuban hotel trade, we have to mention certain aspects of the Cuban history that characterized the opening of the first hotels in Cuba.

It was then that the first true hotels in Havana appeared. As an example of this, we can mention the Telegrafo (Telegraph) Hotel founded in 1860 which is considered the oldest extant hotel in Cuba at present. This hotel, although in a different place from today, was located in one of the most popular corners of the city at that moment, Prado and Neptuno. In time, the Telegrafo Hotel would offer an excellent communication service with phones in every room and its own telegraphic service.

Next to the Telegrafo there was the Inglaterra (England) Hotel, also one of the oldest in Cuba. This hotel offered, for the first time, the service "a la carte". Among the firsts hotels built in Cuba is the Santa Isabel, founded in 1867 by an American man. The Santa Isabel was considered the best hotel of the city. It had big airy rooms, restaurant service, etc. The additional advantage of this hotel was the fact that the ladies were assisted by a staff of their same sex, that is to say, the hotel had maid service, something still unknown in Cuba. Besides that, the knowledge of the English language was introduced among the employees, a fact that increased its prestige within the emerging hotel business rivalry.

Another hotel that called the attention because of the exclusivity of its services during the last decades of the 19th century was the Miramar hotel, which no longer exists in our days. With the end of the Spanish rule over the island in 1898 and the establishment of the Republic, the hotel trade horizons widened considerably. The growth of the city and its increased urban assessment that intended to open to the modern world, as well as the increase of the Cuban bourgeoisie economic welfare, made possible the construction of new hotel facilities. But sometimes they did not fit the aspirations of certain guests and it was necessary to have a hotel that would please them, it was built then... the first luxury hotel.

The first hotel that had the requirements demanded at that time to be considered luxurious was the Sevilla hotel, founded in 1908. This hotel and the disappeared Almendares Hotel were the only luxurious hotels in Havana until 1930, when the Hotel Nacional de Cuba was built. At the same time that the world interest on knowing the beauty of the island was growing, attracting a lot of visitors every year, there were other historical events that contributed to the hotel construction in Cuba to a great extent.

By that time, rum, the roulette, gambling and horse racing bets, the Jai Alai and cock fights, made the tourists' stay in Cuba very pleasant. As a result, on that period many hotels were built in Havana. It was the second time that gambling and the hotel trade coincided. The Mafia had plans to turn Havana into Las Vegas, the American city that had become a giant casino.

In 1959 the Cuban Hotel Directory registered the existence of 125 hotels with a total capacity of 7 728 rooms. Besides those, the National Hotel, the Comodoro and the Plaza were renovated. The Mafia had so many plans in Cuba and in Havana that they included the building of hotels, casinos and entertainment centers all along the Malecon ( sea wall ), so that avenue would be like an inner street between two hotel lines. During the 90,s the tourist sphere in Cuba started to recover because the Cuban state recognized undeniable values of exploiting the international tourism as a way to support a country's inner economy. During those years started then the last stage ( still in course ) of the hotel trade in the largest of the Antilles, impulsing the building of modern competitive hotels all along thecountry. Nowadays, hotels are built wherever there were natural resources that could became a tourist attraction whether it is near or far from Havana. Thanks to the increase of the hotel facilities after the 90's, Cuba is again among the favorite world destinations when one thinks of spending his holidays