KARUNA SHINSHO, CNN ANCHOR: The United States Congress is working on legislation to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba. Lucia Newman reports the communist-led island is one of the hottest vacation destinations on the map.</s>LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Cuban chefs preparing Japanese food for European and Canadian tourists. Our waiter serves snacks to overseas guests on white sandy beaches. Not so long ago, many of these Cuban hotel employees were cutting sugar cane. In Holguin Province, where sugar cane fields once dominated the horizon, modern apartment complexes are springing up as housing for the thousands of farmers who have abandoned the fields to work in Cuba's new national treasure: tourism. The government is opening up new hotels in and joint ventures with overseas firms all along Cuba's northeastern coast. No longer is tourism limited to Varadero Beach and Havana, on the western side of the island.</s>KEES AERTS, RESORT MANAGER: Tourism in Varadero is very well known, with long years of tradition and history, but the future will be in the countryside, where it is unspoiled, with beautiful beaches.</s>NEWMAN: Tourists see other advantages.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cost is an issue. It's less expensive. And it's all natural; what you see here is what you get.</s>NEWMAN: For as long as anyone can remember, Cuba's economy depended on its sugar harvest. But in the early '90s, the collapse of Soviet subsidies to the communist island made the already inefficient sugar industry plummet. Rather than keep betting on a losing horse, the government turned to tourism, as a lifeline. Today, overseas visitors generate more than 40 percent of Cuba's income. And although the island is still off limits to the nearby Americans, nearly two million tourists are expected here this year -- sweet news for a country that's going sour on sugar. Lucia Newman, CNN, Holguin, Cuba.
Cuba Among Most Popular Vacations on Globe