Hotel management in Cuba and the transfer of best practices

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the management challenges faced by international hotel operators when applying universally accepted management principles to the Cuban hospitality market.

The authors use both secondary and primary research sources based on fieldwork carried out in Cuba during the first semester of 2003 and a later visit during the months of December 2003 and January 2004. Eight in‐depth interviews were conducted with senior executives of Cuban, Spanish and French hotel corporations.

The paper presents a scenario where the state's role in the protection of the socialist revolutionary principles, combined with the need to adopt some market‐based management practices, constitutes a singular case in the world of hotel management. In the current Cuban institutional context, the implementation of some western best management practices can produce significant results, while others produce negative outcomes, and therefore, should be held back until the institutional context is changed.

The paper has implications for managers in suggesting that from a hotel perspective, the application of universally accepted best management practices must be carried out practice by practice and country by country.

This paper contributes to increased knowledge about the dilemmas of managing hotels in a still highly centralised socialist country but with an increasingly market‐based economy.