Good practices in the management of the cruise services in the main Caribbean destinations. Actions for its improvement in the Havana destination

Abstract

Within the growth achieved by cruise tourism, the Caribbean area stands out as the first world destination. Located in this context is the island of Cuba, whose development in cruise tourism has been conditioned by the measures taken over the years by the United States government. Havana, as the main port of the island for the reception of cruise ships, presents a deteriorated infrastructure; a scarce non-hotel offers; as well as lower figures in terms of cruise ship arrivals and expenses at the destination, in relation to leading Caribbean destinations. Therefore, this research has the objective of designing a set of actions to improve the management of the service to cruise ships in the destination. For this, a methodology was used that allowed the identification of good practices in Caribbean destinations, leaders in the activity, where theoretical and empirical methods such as bibliographic analysis, interview with specialists in the sector and expert judgment were used. In this way, the results obtained allowed to know the current performance gap between Havana and leading destinations in the Caribbean, as well as the identification of the good practices that they carry out in managing cruise service. Lastly, 22 actions were designed that contemplate the implementation of these good practices in the management of cruise service in Havana.