Thursday Announcement Likely to Further Pump Up U.S. Travel to Cuba

The U.S. government will announce Thursday a new set of measures to ease travel to Cuba as well as trade with the island nation as a part of the normalization process of bilateral relations, according to congressional sources.

Although the details are still to be worked out, it seems that the White House will relax the restrictions so that people that fit into the 12 approved categories, such as traveling for family reasons, educational or cultural trips, can travel to Cuba.

The new measures will probably allow more people to go on self-directed tours without having to rely on group tours or be sponsored by an organization. Several U.S. airlines have applied for routes to Cuba following a bilateral agreement for regular scheduled flights that was signed recently.

Travel experts from the island expect that U.S. travel to Cuba could increase another 20 percent this year thanks to these upcoming changes. The administration believes that such moves to loosen the embargo would mainly benefit the Cuban people.

On the economic front, the US government intends to remove some existing barriers to trade and banking with the Caribbean island. If approved, the changes will be announced on the eve of Barack Obama's travel to Cuba, scheduled for March 20 to 22.

Obama will be accompanied by Secretary of State, John Kerry, and a delegation of nearly a two dozen lawmakers from the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as from the Democratic and Republican parties.