“Wellness Tourism” at Meliá Hotels: Another Exclusive Offer for Foreigners in Cuba

MIAMI, United States. – Meliá, the Spanish hotel chain and Empresa Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos –the Cuban Medical Services Marketing Company- signed an agreement to sell health and wellness services to clients who stay in hotel facilities managed by the Spanish company in the Island.

According to a release published on Travel Trade Caribbean’s website, the agreement is “a mutual benefit agreement aimed at enabling quality of life and wellness options at hotel venues.”

Products offered by Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos to Meliá are divided into three basic categories: quality of life; specific programs, and programs for event travel, groups and incentives. According to Travel Trade Caribbean, “the first category includes those services designed for the personal enjoyment of Meliá Cuba clients; the second category includes programs that can last for a few days; and, finally, the third category will include options designed specifically for the group events that are scheduled to take place in Meliá facilities.”

Among the services that will be offered are different types of massages; music and aroma therapy; yoga; tai chi; laser puncture; guided relaxation, and anti-stress programs. Allegedly, these services will be administered by “highly-qualified professional experts who are certified by the Ministry of Public Health.”

Travel Trade Caribbean also indicated that Meliá will assume responsibility for preparing the necessary spaces in its hotels, the actual promotion of those services, and their dissemination through all its channels.

The agreement was signed by Francisco Camps, Meliá’s representative in Cuba, and Yamila de Armas, president of Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos. Comercializadora is the same company that administers the multimillion-dollar income that the export of medical services generates for the regime through the so-called “internationalists missions.”

The Cuban government has been criticized frequently for offering better-quality health services to foreign tourists, in detriment of services given to Cuban nationals.

In a report published several months ago by CubaNet, a team of our own independent journalists reported that health tourism in the island is a “paradise for foreigners”, which stands in sharp contrast with “hospitals, policlinics, maternity waiting homes and COVID-19 isolation centers whose building facilities lack even the most basic maintenance,” as well as with “a network of pharmacies that are depleted, and a pharmaceutical industry that today makes ‘exportable’ vaccines and ‘magic’ ointments like Melagenina, but is incapable of producing an IV saline solution bag.”

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Fuente Cubanet.org