Melia said Friday it has ceased all operations of its 34 hotels in Cuba, a full withdrawal that lands squarely in the middle of the island’s deepening economic crisis and the hardening of U.S. sanctions. The Spanish hotel group said operational, legal and financial difficulties drove the exit. The hotels had been run through its Portuguese subsidiary Ilha Bela Gestao E Turismo.
Who Gets Crushed
Teresa Carrillo, a 62-year-old resident of Havana, put the damage in plain language: "There is no tourism flow, there is no income, and no economy. The impact is huge." That’s the human cost behind the corporate retreat and the sanctions regime. When the big players pull out, people at the bottom don’t get a press release. They get emptier streets, thinner wallets and another layer of scarcity.
Tourism has long been a key engine of Cuba’s economy, but this year it has slumped as the island faces a widening economic crisis amid an oil blockade imposed by the U.S. at the beginning of 2026. Between January and April, international visitor arrivals fell to 328,608, a 56% drop from the same period in 2025. Those numbers don’t just describe a downturn. They show a system being squeezed from above, with ordinary people left to absorb the pressure.
Who Has the Power
Friday’s complete withdrawal from Cuba follows Melia’s announcement last month that it was ceasing operations of 15 of its 34 hotels. The company’s exit also follows recent announcements from privately-owned Iberostar and Barceló, marking the end of decades of involvement in the island’s tourism market by the three main Spanish hotel chains. The bosses move when the risk changes. The workers and residents stay behind to live with the consequences.
Pressure from Washington increased earlier this month when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism. The hotel closures come amid a wider exodus of international companies, including financial and logistics businesses, evaluating the increased risk of operating in Cuba after Washington’s tightened sanctions. Visa and Mastercard halted several operations, while key airlines such as Air France, Turkish Airlines, Iberia and World2Fly suspended flights to the island. That’s how power works here: not through one dramatic blow, but through a chain of decisions made far above the people who pay for them.
What They Call “Risk”
Melia said it cited operational, legal and financial difficulties as the determining factors for its departure from the island, where it has had a major presence since 1990. The company’s hotels were run through a subsidiary, the kind of corporate arrangement that keeps the machinery moving while the people on the ground deal with the fallout. The language is sterile. The effect isn’t.
The wider retreat of international companies shows how quickly capital abandons a place when sanctions and instability make profit harder to guarantee. Financial and logistics businesses are also evaluating the increased risk of operating in Cuba. Airlines suspend flights. Payment networks halt operations. Hotel chains leave. The island’s economy takes the hit, and the people living inside it are told to endure the shortage.
What’s Left Behind
Melia’s departure closes a chapter that began in 1990, when it built a major presence in Cuba’s tourism market. Now the island faces a shrinking flow of visitors, a tightening sanctions regime and a growing list of companies deciding the market isn’t worth the trouble. The numbers are stark, but the hierarchy is starker: decisions made in corporate offices and Washington ripple outward until they land on Havana residents like Carrillo, who can already see the damage in daily life.
The hotel chain is gone. The sanctions remain. And the people who never got a vote in any of it are left to live with the wreckage.