Cuba Promotes the Digital Transformation of Its Tourism
The Varadero resort is transforming into a smart tourist destination and will have a destination manager with its own powers to make decisions without depending on external bodies, announced Master of Science Pavel Pavón Vargas, director of Technology and Systems of Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism.
The official explained this during the 3rd International Tourism Workshop, held at the Internacional Varadero hotel as part of the 4th International University-Society Congress 2026.
According to Pavón Vargas, the change implies an organizational and functional restructuring of the territorial delegations. «Tourism in Varadero, for example, is managed in Varadero and solved in Varadero,» he affirmed, specifying that these managers will have autonomous capacities and powers.
The process is supported by so-called smart governance, whose executing arm is the smart offices. Its general purpose is to create a digital ecosystem where technology and companies, touristic or not, are linked.
The objective is to gather the data the sector generates and analyze it with specialized tools so that managers decide based on evidence.
To that end, a tourism intelligence platform was developed, into which artificial intelligence tools are incorporated that manage online reputation and allow knowing visitors’ sentiments in order to respond to them.
«The technology and the platforms being used are nothing more than an enabler of change,» stressed the official, who added that «today it is necessary to accompany the digital traveler in each phase of their travel cycle.»
Pavón Vargas defined digital transformation as the use of technologies to drive the organizational and structural change of a process, and placed Varadero within the international paradigm of smart tourist destinations.
His lecture, «Digital Transformation in Destination Management. Governance Axis,» was one of the most followed of the workshop, along with that of Doctor of Science Manuel Calviño, professor emeritus of the University of Havana, who spoke on «The Management of Emotions, Tactics, and Strategies of Effective Direction.»
The gathering took place under the motto «Challenges and Learnings Toward Sustainable Tourism.» For the sector’s Ministry, the development of smart tourism is not a task of the future but of the present, necessary to sustain competitiveness against other destinations and to get travelers to choose and recommend Cuba as something more than a sun-and-beach destination.
