This month a room costs between 295 and 383 euros per night at the new INNSiDE Habana Catedral hotel, inaugurated last Saturday by the Spanish group Meliá in Old Havana. If the traveler prefers the “Townhouse Suite”, with 52 square meters, bed king size and a view of the bay, the price rises to the stratosphere: 1,825 euros per night.
The prices of the restaurant, as verified 14 intervene, they follow the same tonic. The dishes range from 700 pesos for a “vegan chef-style” salad to 2,600 for a beef steak with potatoes and red wine sauce, going through a ceviche at 1,300 pesos, a sticky rice with seafood at 1,800 or a fish at 2,000 pesos. As for the desserts, you can order brownie torrija for 450 pesos or fruit macedonia for 400.
In the letter, which has the prices in CUP and in foreign currency, it is observed that they apply an exchange rate of 120 pesos per freely convertible currency (MLC).
“There is not a fly there, and they look at you as if you were an alien”
This Thursday, the place was empty. “Four employees for a single customer,” said a young woman from Havana who recounted the experience of having coffee. “There isn’t a fly there, and they look at you as if you were an alien.”
He paid 264 pesos for the coffee. “A little bit of coffee, I asked for it simple,” she says. It was not enough for a bottle of water, which cost, small, 264 pesos, and large, more than 300. “Luckily they put a glass of water for me next to the coffee. It was the size for a three-year-old child but something is something”.
As in establishments of this type in the capital, at the INNSiDE Habana Catedral they do not accept cash and you have to pay by card. To collect, they have an electronic reader for CUP and another for MLC.
The hotel, one block from the Plaza de la Catedral, occupies number 113 Empedrado Street, where an office building was located for more than 60 years.
The emblematic and modern building was built at the beginning of the 50s, not without controversy, as the chronicles of the time attest, instead of an 18th century colonial house that had to be demolished. “In its place, and completely out of place in that area, a seven-story ultra-Miami skyscraper will rise,” reads the newspaper archive of the Navy Journal. The building, which finally had five floors, was destined for office use, some of them belonging to the extinct Unión de Petróleo.
Before it was reopened by Meliá, it had been under construction at least seven years. In its websitethe hotelier says that it was “conceived to give the most curious travelers an impressive urban experience”, and they invite the foreigner who can afford it: “You will find infinite peace in our pool with unparalleled views of the Lighthouse and the sea. Are you ready to the adventure?”.
Although luxury hotels do not stop opening on the island, the tourism data does not justify it. The sector, the country’s third source of foreign currency -behind the sale of medical services and remittances-, has not managed to recover even half of the international visits registered before the covid-19 pandemic.
According to the latest official figures, between January and August of this year, Cuba received 1,390,000 tourists, barely 44.5% of the total registered in the same period of 2019, before the coronavirus.
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