Skift Take
Travel brands and Cuba's ailing infrastructure are already struggling with accommodating 285,000 U.S. travelers per year in and around Havana. What happens when that number multiplies by seven?
It's not that U.S. travelers aren't interested in Cuba, it's that "supply just went crazy" and Americans aren't familiar with many of the smaller Cuban cities that carriers in the United States were initially enthusiastic about.
That's the view of Marguerite Fitzgerald, partner and managing director at Boston Consulting Group, who recently surveyed U.S. travelers about their current and future interest in visiting Cuba.
Last year, total airline capacity between five U.S. cities and nine Cuban cities increased to two million seats per year -- almost overnight. When U.S. airlines such as American Airlines, JetBlue, and Southwest launched flights to Cuba late last summer, they didn't consider "the demand wasn't as high as the sheer volume of flights that airlines were adding all of a sudden," said Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald, who's traveled to Cuba three times, visited most recently last month when she flew American Airlines between Miami and Havana and said there were many empty seats on the flight.
But Havana remains more popular than other cities as U.S. carriers have cut back capacity by seven percent to Havana this year versus 33 percent to other cities, airline data firm OAG found.
"Americans only know Havana and our sur
