Spain's Melià Hotels International has said it will withdraw from the management of 15 hotels in Cuba, joining compatriot Iberostar and Canada's Blue Diamond Resorts in a sweeping retreat by foreign operators from the island's tourism sector as a US deadline for companies to sever ties with GAESA, the Cuban military's sprawling commercial conglomerate, approaches.

In a further sign of the widening economic fallout, Cuba's central bank said on June 3 that Visa and Mastercard transactions would be suspended from June 6 after a foreign payment processor decided to wind down its Cuba operations in response to US sanctions.

Melià, the largest foreign hotel operator in Cuba with 34 properties on the island, said the decision stemmed from a combined assessment of geopolitical, legal, economic and social conditions that had moved beyond the company's capacity to manage. "The decision has been taken from a deep sense of corporate responsibility and is the result of a combination of circumstances beyond the company's capacity to manage or influence," the company said in a filing to Spain's securities regulator.

The announcement carries limited immediate commercial consequences: most of the 15 hotels had already been dark for weeks, a symptom of the rolling blackouts and collapsing visitor numbers that have gutted Cuba's tourism sector, and Melià acknowledged as much in its filing.

The wave of corporate withdrawals has been driven by Executive Order 14404, signed by President Donald Trump on May 1, which froze GAESA's assets and placed foreign companies doing business with the Cuban military conglomerate on notice. Firms that have not unwound those relationships by this week’s deadline face the prospect of being cut off from the US financial system, a threat that has proved sufficient to accelerate departures across the sector.

Washington accuses GAESA of siphoning revenues from Cuba's most lucrative industries, among them tourism, remittances and logistics, for the benefit of the military and the country's elite. Havana rejects the characterisation, arguing that the conglomerate has contributed openly to national economic and social development.

Iberostar, until recently Cuba's second-largest foreign hotel operator, confirmed it had ceased running 12 of its 18 properties as of June 1, retaining management only of six hotels across Havana, Varadero, Trinidad and Cayo Guillermo. Among the hotels leaving its portfolio is the Iberostar Selection Havana, a luxury 42-floor tower inaugurated last year and considered the tallest hotel in the country, into which the Cuban state had ploughed nearly $200mn. Blue Diamond Resorts, the third-largest foreign operator by property count, has also exited entirely, according to Cuban state media, though the Canadian company had yet to make a formal public announcement. Blue Diamond had operated roughly 15 hotels under brands including Royalton and Memories across Havana, Varadero and Cayo Largo del Sur.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, has been among the architects of the sanctions push, accusing Cuban leaders of using GAESA as a vehicle for corruption and self-enrichment and framing the measures as targeted at the military rather than ordinary Cubans.

The departures mark a sharp escalation of pressure on an industry that had long been the island's principal source of hard currency but has never recovered to its pre-pandemic levels. Cuba received roughly 2.2mn international visitors in 2024, already the lowest figure in nearly two decades; arrivals fell a further 20% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025. Both Melià and Iberostar had built their Cuban presence during the 1990s, a decade in which Havana threw open its beaches and hotel stock to foreign capital after the Soviet Union's collapse left the island without its principal economic patron.

Cuba's long-standing economic crisis has worsened dramatically since January, when a US military operation captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, severing the subsidised oil supplies on which Havana had depended to keep its decrepit power grid functioning. Washington subsequently issued an executive order threatening tariffs on any country supplying fuel to the island, deterring Mexico and other potential suppliers. The resulting blackouts — Cuba has suffered several nationwide outages in recent months — closed many of the hotels that foreign chains are now abandoning.

The executive order and fuel limitations have also prompted airlines, including from traditional allies like Russia, and global shipping firms to halt services to the island, while Canadian authorities and several European governments have issued travel advisories discouraging tourism. The mining company Sherritt International, long considered the largest single foreign investment in Cuba, has also been reviewing its operations under the threat of US sanctions.

Cuba’s communist government has condemned the measures as economic aggression and appealed to the UN for support, but Havana's protests have done little to slow the retreat. With its energy infrastructure now crippled, its hotels emptying and its skies thinning of international flights, the island faces the prospect of a tourism sector stripped of the foreign partnerships it has depended on for three decades.