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Cuban tourist arrivals up 16 pct in 1st half

Xinhua, July 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

Cuba received 1,923,326 tourists between Jan. 1 and Jun. 30 in 2015, up 15.9 percent over the same period in 2014, an official report said Thursday.

Cuba's National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) announced on Thursday that 218,635 tourists visited the Caribbean island in June alone. This represents a 20.6-percent increase from the same month last year.

The United Kingdom, France and Italy are still the main sources of foreign visitors in the first quarter, and all of them have witnessed a growth of between 10 percent and 28 percent in the number of tourists to the island country.

Three Latin American countries -- Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico -- trailed behind the above European states. Among them, Venezuela has seen the biggest increase, or 61.5 percent, in the number of visitors in the first half of 2015.

The notable increase in tourists visiting Cuba came after the historic diplomatic rapprochement between Cuba and the United States, which was announced in December 2014.

Even though the ONEI did not mention the number of U.S. holidaymakers, they are likely to increase as U.S. President Barack Obama loosened travel restrictions in January, which, as part of a U.S. blockade policy, are still in force for U.S. citizens who want to visit Cuba.

Tourism is the Caribbean island's second source of foreign exchange earners, which stood at more than 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.

In 2014, Cuba received a record three million tourists, an increase of 5.5 percent over 2013. Endi