Travel suppliers and other groups are rushing to get licenses and organize people to people exchanges with Cuba, after the decision of the U.S. government to ease restrictions and allow a broader range of Americans visit the Caribbean island for the first time in seven years. So far, the Treasury Department has issued about 30 licenses to organizations that say they offer “travel with a purpose, ‘which will allow Cuban Americans to reach the common” support their desire to freely determine the future of their country. “
While Cuban-Americans can now travel freely to the island if they receive a visa to Cuba, and allowed to travel to other Americans who fall into a limited number of categories, the U.S. has banned trade in people to people since late 2003, when President George W. Bush reversed a policy begun during the Clinton administration. Insight Cuba, a company that previously operated the people to people exchanges, seems to be the first to take advantage of the new provisions. The company plans to ship its first four groups of visitors to Cuba on August 11.
Other groups, from the Association of Graduates of Harvard University and the luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent, who announced his trip as “Cuba: The Forbidden Island revealed” – to Witness for Peace, are also ready to travel Cuba.
Harvard’s trip from 26 October to 1. November and promises to “unlock the riches of Cuban culture,” is only for waiting list.
A & K, which will work with the Foundation for Caribbean Studies, a nonprofit organization that currently has the license, began last week announced that it has 13 trips scheduled between September and April next. All have been sold.
“We knew there would be interest, but this is unbelievable,” said Jean Fawcett, a spokesman for A & K. ”We are taking names for a waiting list, and we plan to increase travel in 2012.”
Witness for Peace says it will offer conversations with “ordinary Cubans to speak about their achievements, challenges and daily struggles.” Your journey of 10 nights in December cost $ 1,550, a relative bargain in the world of exchange between peoples.
10-night trips to A & K, in contrast, cost from $ 4.325 in a room, and cover a wide swath of Cuba, with visits to Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Havana and Matanzas.
A & K began as a promoter of safaris in Kenya, promises that his trips to Cuba will have the same high standards those customers have come to expect.
Travelers will stay in an apartment in the Hotel National, eat almost exclusively in taste buds, whose menus are planned with staff from A & K travel in the new buses with air conditioning and leather seats, and pass through controls preferential customs and immigration said Fawcett. But throughout the trip, said there will be many opportunities to interact with Cubans. ”We do not want people to feel like a tourist. We want this to be a genuine exchange of people to people, “said Fawcett.
As part of the U.S. embargo against Cuba for decades Washington has limited travel and expense money from Americans in Cuba, although there have been exceptions for travelers and Cuban Americans, journalists, who will travel to academic research and professional and for people in humanitarian and religious missions.
Announcing the new travel policy, the government of President Barrack Osama said that people to people exchanges would support civil society and the free flow of information. This year, the government also relaxed regulations for religious and educational trips to Cuba, allowing universities, schools and religious organizations do not apply for licenses to travel Washington. A Florida law, however, prohibits public schools and universities fund travel to Cuba, but other students can go, provided they receive credit and meet a curriculum of at least three weeks.
The new rules are not liked by the Cuban delegation of South Florida in Congress. Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera, both Republicans, have introduced amendments that would restore more restrictive regulations for the administration of Bush’s Cuba travel policy, eliminating not only the people to people exchanges, but also prohibits Cuban-Americans visiting the island once every three years for family reasons. Remittances are also limited to $ 1,200, and would tighten the definition of what is understood as a family.
Earlier this month, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen sent a letter to the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), after seeing a newspaper of Louisiana quoted a travel agency as saying that “the real first wave of U.S. tourists arrive in the friendly skies of [Cuba] on 11 August.
“Ros-Lehtinen called this “a blatant misrepresentation” of the rules of travel, and wanted to know what he was doing the OFAC to prevent or correct the activity by travel agents. The OFAC issued a statement on Monday, saying is aware of errors in the media, giving the impression that the U.S. “now allows virtually unrestricted travel to Cuba.”
The statement reminds travelers that there are rules governing such travel, including spending limits and a ban on buying any memory, except for informational materials. Travel organizations that have received licenses say the Treasury has been strict, demanding sometimes additional details and definitions, and insisting that there is significant interaction between Cubans and travelers.
“These trips are highly structured. We spent very little time on the beaches, and focus on historical sites, “said Burt Altman, a retired teacher who with his wife, Norma, will lead a tour in April 2012 for Learning in Retirement program (Learning in Retirement)aimed at retired or semiretired people affiliated with the University of Wisconsin La Crosse.
One of the stipulations of the license, he said, was that “people were busy at all times.”
Most travel from town to town leave Miami, and prices do not include airfare.
Insight Cuba, leading to 16 people per group submitted its license application in January, the same day that the guidelines were published in the Federal Register.”We knew something was going to change, so we kept our relations in Cuba,” said Tom Popper, director of Insight Cuba. ”It was like lifting the hood of a car that was in the garage and figure out what to do to make return trips.”
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