Cuba makes its bid for events and incentive travel

Cuba hopes to notch some 325,000 arrivals this year in the category of events and incentive travel, a modality that grabbed roughly 200,000 tourists in 2002. This piece of information was broken within the framework of the Convention Bureau’s annual meeting to assess last year’s upshots.

Also in 2003, Cuba is gunning for 3.7 to 5 times more earnings per capita in this modality than in conventional tourism, alongside a 15 percent increase in using the island nation’s tourist infrastructure, a figure that peaked 12 percent last year.

After hosting some 440 events in 2002, Cuba expects to have as many as 461 this time up, some of them with 1,000-plus attendants. According to some stats provided by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA), Cuba ranks fifth as the most sought-after event destination in the Western Hemisphere, while Havana holds a strong fourth spot among cities in the Americas.