Cuba gov’t praises Jardines del Rey hotels for sustainable practices

Jardines del Rey (“Gar­dens of the King”) is an archipelago off the north­ern coast of Cuba, in the provinces of Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey.

Accord­ing to the report, Cuba’s Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­no­logy and Envir­on­ment gave the four hotels spe­cial recog­ni­tion for their “integ­ra­tion into the envir­on­ment and appro­pri­ate use of nat­ur­al resources”.

The hotels reportedly act­ively fight against pol­lu­tion and for the pro­tec­tion of flora and fauna. They “use the nat­ive veget­a­tion of the coastal zones, both in the garden­ing and the areas near the hotels, and main­tain the strip of the dune in a nat­ur­al state”.

Aer­i­al view of the Meliá Cayo Coco. The oth­er three prop­er­ties recog­nised were the Pest­ana, also in Cayo Coco, and the Ibero­star Dai­quirí and Playa Pil­ar, both in Cayo Guillermo.

“The ration­al use of water and the applic­a­tion of meas­ures for sav­ing the liquid, as well as the pro­tec­tion of the dunes by means of the con­struc­tion of cat­walks” were oth­er considerations.

The hotels’ facil­it­ies are “coupled with the sur­round­ings, where eco­lo­gic­al and land­scape val­ues abound, very well inser­ted in the archi­tec­ture of the buildings”.

Once con­sidered a for­bid­den fruit among trav­el­lers who care about what the Amer­ic­an gov­ern­ment thinks, Cuba is now well and truly open for busi­ness and vul­ner­able to the threats tour­ism brings. We can only hope the Com­mun­ist state brings to good tour­ism prac­tice what it has appar­ently brought to med­ic­al sci­ence — pas­sion, focus, innov­a­tion, and res­ults — des­pite the doubts of much of the rest of the world.

Fea­tured image: NASA Astro­naut Terry Virts on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion tweeted this sunny-day Carib­bean image out to his social media fans on March 4, 2015 with this attached com­ment: “#Cuba is sur­roun­ded by some unbe­liev­able beaches and blue-green waters”. Source: NASA/Terry Virts via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.