Cuban, American Tour Operators Join Hands against Travel Ban

U.S. tour operators are now uniting each other to limit the damages that happened on the heels of tighter travel restrictions on Americans to Cuba.

Despite the tightening, Cuba's Ministry of Tourism has just announced that the island nation has cracked the 3-million-tourist-arrival plateau 75 days ahead of when it reached that figure back in 2016. The country is showing off a staggering uptick of 24 percent so far this year.

U.S. President Donald Trump had rolled the back parts of the former President Barack Obama’s historic opening to Cuba. He referred the opening to Cuba was a “terrible and misguided deal”.

The revised approach of President Donald Trump on Cuba consists of the stricter enforcement of a longtime ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists. Among changes are the limitations of the visits to 12 existing categories of non-tourist travel and a ban on the use of hotels and other facilities owned by Cuba’s military.

The luxury and affordable cruise ships are permitted but not for the independent visits by solo travelers and families under the popular people-to-people travel category.

Many people in USA took the message of Donald Trump to denote that travel to Cuba, except on cruise ships, was again off limits. It is a misconception they hope to change with a trade group formed in the last month to influence the debate on Cuba and help would-be visitors navigate new rules.

Tour operators in USA and Cuba fear that for the travel ban a misconception is forming and it will make a slowdown in the travel business.

Cuba Cultural Travel’s Michael Sykes, who founded the group American Tour Operators in Cuba (ATOC) expressed to unite each other on this issue.  He also said that the tour operators can work with the new rules with minimal changes, but the stricter change will give a direct hit to the tourism industry, while many American travelers are not so well informed and believe that travel to Cuba is being prohibited.

Some 300,000 Americans, excluding those of Cuban descent, visited Cuba in the first six months of 2017, which is more than twice last year’s number during the same period. Of those, 40,000 Americans traveled outside with the organized tour groups using online booking.

The tour organizers also said that they are receiving the requests from a lot of small groups, families, couples’ trips, birthday parties and other homely occasions. They were already planning to visit Cuba with a cruise of various budgets.