UNLV professor’s ideas about Cuba a hard sell

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, Oct. 22, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

Corporate America should provide a united front to the U.S. government for the benefit of the (hospitality) industry as a whole, and one that cannot be ignored for the benefit of Southern Florida politics.

Cuba at the Crossroads, an essay co-authored by Michael LaTour, left, chairman of the UNLV marketing department, with Sergei Khrushchev and Tony L. Henthorne.

Michael LaTour, chairman of the UNLV marketing department, squeezed out a nervous laugh when asked, "Any calls from Miami yet?"

The professor had teamed up with Sergei Khrushchev - yes, the son of that Khrushchev - and just released an academic paper about the future of tourism in Cuba, days before the 26th anniversary of the missile crisis on the Caribbean island.

A brilliant marketing strategy.

The only problem is that selling ideas about Cuba is not as easy as, say, selling ideas about burgers.

LaTour has done both, having analyzed the In-N-Out chain in a recent paper. Now he's an author of "Cuba at the Crossroads: The Role of the U.S. Hospitality Industry in Cuban Tourism Initiatives," soon to be published in Cornell University's Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly.

The paper, which also has a third author, hits you squarely from the start with one of the most fractured pieces in the puzzle of U.S.-Cuban relations since 1959: the embargo.

"The U.S. embargo has clearly been costly to the Cuban people," the first sentence says. The paper then describes "a deep degree of distrust between our two peoples" that one of its authors discovered in recent visits to the island, plus a review of the past 50 years of tourism in Cuba, which it says is on the upswing, and a call for "in-depth, multifaceted basic and applied cross-cultural research" as a basis for future U.S. tourism ventures in Cuba.

LaTour said "the basic premise" of the paper - future business in the so-called hospitality industry would have to be based on research aimed at discovering ways to overcome that distrust - was that of Khrushchev, son of the Cold War Soviet premier.

"There are not many people walking the earth with more experience with the Cuban people," he added.

But all that doesn't appear to interest Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. The Cuban-American congressman drafted much of the 1996 legislation that strengthened the U.S. embargo against Cuba, making the lifting of sanctions contingent upon the liberation of all political prisoners and the scheduling of free elections.

A e-mail exchange with Diaz-Balart's staffers produced a position paper in which the congressman argues against lifting the embargo. In doing so, he draws a parallel between the Soviet Union's former billions of dollars in aid to the island nation and the money U.S. tourism could contribute to its economy.

"I would ask them to remember Grenada, Nicaragua, Angola, Eritrea," he warns.

Tony Alamo Sr. arrived from Cuba 46 years ago and is the former senior vice president of the Mandalay Resort Group. So he knows Cuba and casinos.

Alamo said it's unlikely U.S. resorts would be interested in Cuba for the foreseeable future.

"Businesses will follow where there is a perception of profit," Alamo said. "As long as there is a system (in Cuba) such as there is now, forget about it."

Not everyone knowledgeable about Cuba has such a deep stake in the issue, starting with not being Cuban. But they still have strong opinions.

John Kavulich, senior policy adviser for the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc., a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization he founded in 1994 to provide information to U.S. businesses about Cuba, attacked one of LaTour's central premises: that researchers have something to say to big business when it comes to Cuba.

LaTour said in an interview, "There will not be effective U.S. business practices unless there's a blueprint and that's what research will provide . If his vision becomes reality, he added, "it's going to be a brave new world down there - based on research."

Kavulich cautions against that theory.

"U.S. hospitality companies do not need the assistance of academics," he said. "They've been gathering their own information ... for the last 20 years."

Another principle LaTour and company's paper puts forth is that future U.S.-Cuba ventures in tourism, hotels and related concerns must take the lead from Cuba to avoid the heavy-handedness the researchers contend Cubans fear.

But Washington-based international law attorney Robert Muse, recently returned from an economic fact-finding trip to Cuba, said that taking the lead from Cuba could make you doubt whether the island has much interest in tourism.

La Tour's paper includes data showing increasing numbers of tourists arriving in Cuba in recent years. The chart tops off in 2005. But Muse said there's been a drop in the past two years, amid a decline in infrastructure and service. "If you read this article cold, you would think this is an upward trend," he said. "It's not."

Kavulich noted that Cuba now relies on Venezuela and China for economic support and appears to have little interest in expanding the hospitality industry.

But beyond the relative weight of an academic paper in the hands of businessmen and women, or the paper's analyses of tourism data, there's one thing that can't be avoided if you're writing about Cuba, which is politics.

LaTour appears to think that even politics can be swayed by papers such as his. Cuban exiles, he said, "are still going to have to rely on research" when it comes to future decisions. "It has to be based on science, not emotions," he added.

Muse cuts to the quick here.

"To realize the vision of these authors, it would require an act of Congress. That's a powerful enthusiasm-deflating force for businesses," he said.

In the end, the authors appear well-meaning, the attorney said.

"But (their paper) shows a lack of appreciation for and an underestimation of the brutal realities of the politics involved."