By JUAN McCARTNEY, Guardian Senior Reporter, juan@nasguard.com

Despite Cuba's recent increased thrust in tourism marketing and development, its Ambassador to The Bahamas Jose Luis Ponce, said The Bahamas does not have to worry about Cuba competing with it for tourist dollars, as there is plenty of business to go around.

"I think that in the world there are enough tourists for The Bahamas, Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean," he said in a recent interview with The Guardian.

"The Caribbean is a very good market and a very good destination in the world. I think if we plan together and we find ways to have multi-destination tourism, we can work it out without damaging anyone's economy."

Cuba recently had a change in leadership with long-time dictator President Fidel Castro stepping down and his younger brother Raul Castro taking the reigns of power.

Last month, Cuban officials reported that its tourism industry has shown signs of recovery from a two-year drop, with a 15 percent increase in visitors during the first quarter of the year.

Cuban news sources also reported that the number of tourists to the island for 2008 has already surpassed the one million mark, almost a month faster than 2007.

The number of foreign tourists peaked at about 2.32 million in 2005, but slipped to 2.15 last year, according to official statistics.

A 50-year-old ban prevents American tourists from legally visiting the island but thousands reportedly sneak in through other countries such as Canada, Mexico and The Bahamas every year. The United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Germany and Italy rank as top sources of visitors to the island.

Tourism provides the majority of Cuba's hard foreign currency revenue.

While tourism is not the largest sector of the island's economy — that would be Nickel mining and refining — Ponce said it "has been growing nevertheless."

"Tourism plays an important role in the economy of the country so we pay attention to the development of tourism. But at this point it's the second most important sector of our economy," he said.

Ponce added that he would like to see Cuba and The Bahamas work together on a tourism training exchange program in order to strengthen the respective countries' tourism sector.

"We would like to have that kind of relationship," he said, adding that many Bahamians already study in Cuba.

"We see Bahamians coming to Cuba to study and in fact we are offering another set of scholarships. Another 20 Bahamian students are traveling to Cuba to study different university careers and many have come to study since we started this program in the year 2000."

But Ponce said the tourism field is not one many Bahamians study in Cuba or vice-versa.

"Not in the field of tourism itself. We don't see that in terms of learning from each other and I think that we should try to develop that aspect of the relationship because I think we both have things to teach and learn from each other."

Ponce said, "If we want to work together we have to be willing to learn from each other."