And cruise ship companies and hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton have indicated their enthusiasm. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” Frank Del Rio, chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said in an interview. “Cuba and the cruise industry are just a match made in heaven, waiting to happen.”

Despite modest economic advances in the last 15 years, much in Cuba can seem frozen in time, with crumbling Havana buildings and old Chevys and Ladas serving as markers of how far the country has been left behind. But that also means that much of Cuba’s more than 3,500 miles of coastline has remained undeveloped.

In Jucaro, on the south coast, weatherworn fishing boats line the harbor, but the condos and souvenir shops that clutter most Caribbean seaside towns are nowhere to be seen.

Over the last two decades, Cuba has taken steps to preserve its natural resources and promote sustainable development. Environmental problems remain, including overfishing and the erosion and deforestation left from earlier eras. But the ministry overseeing environmental issues has a strong voice. And since 1992, when Fidel Castro denounced “the ecological destruction threatening the planet” in a speech to the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, a series of tough environmental laws has been passed, including regulations governing the management of the coastal zone. The government has designated 104 marine protected areas, though some still exist only on paper, with no administration or enforcement, and it has set a goal of conserving 25 percent of the country’s coastal waters.