Tom Stieghorst
President Obama is doing what he can to push the pace of reform when it comes to Americans traveling to Cuba. Last week he unveiled another salvo of rule changes designed to make trade and travel easier without violating the broader economic embargo of Cuba that remains in place.
While many in the U.S. are salivating at the prospects of an open Cuba, there’s only so much that can be done at once, warned Bruce Nierenberg, president of United Caribbean Lines, which holds one of the licenses to provide ferry service between Florida and Cuba.
“There’s a lot of infrastructure that is required to be handled before ferry service can start,” Nierenberg said. “The Cubans want to do the ferry. The United States wants to do the ferry. But it’s not going to happen on a fast track. It’s going to be done gradually.
“It will be well into next year before any real ferry considerations are done,” he said.
That goes for cruise line operations, as well. The reason for that is mostly on the Cuban side.
Nierenberg, who has been pursuing service to Cuba for years, said the infrastructure barriers have not been exaggerated.
“This floodgate that is apparently trying to be opened is very much constricted by the capacity of the country,” Nierenberg said. “If you don’t have any piers, except the one that existed in downtown Havana, you can only have so many ships call at one time.
“So the capacity restriction of what the real world is in Cuba is going to make things go at a very gradual, slow pace,” he said. “And that’s not bad that it’s happening that way.”
Cuban authorities are determined not to have a chaotic process that reflects poorly on them, Nierenberg said.
“Whether it takes one year or three years or five, it’s going to be the No. 1 destination in the Caribbean, so it just needs to happen in an organized manner,” he said.
It is no coincidence that while the U.S. is flashing every green light it can, within the law, the approvals from the Cuban side are still pending.
“At the end of the day these are their piers, their harbors, their products, and they’re very protective of how they do things,” Nierenberg said. “They want to do it right; they don’t want to look like they’re not ready for this.
“The Cubans are going to decide who goes to Cuba, not the United States.”