Marketing director of Sol Meliá Gabriel Garcia walked in the Plenary Hall of the Plaza America Conference Center yesterday to present the Sol Meliá product. At the onset of his presentation, Mr. Garcia went through all the hits his company has scored since it began operating in Cuba and praised convention planners for drawing a bead on the tourist circuit of Holguin and incentive travel.

Within the framework of the 23rd Tourism Convention, Cuba’s vice minister of Culture Ruben del Valle unveiled Tuesday the island’s cultural product before an audience that included such outstanding Cuban intellectuals as songwriter Chucho Valdes, Miguel Barnet, Jose Loyola –deputy chairman of Cuba’s National Writers and Artists League (UNEAC), Jesus Ortega, founder of the Cuban Guitar School, painters Choco and Manuel, and writer Waldo Leyva, among others.

Cuban air carriers Cubana de Aviacion and Aerocaribbean S.A. signed a shared code contract yesterday afternoon that from now on will allow both airlines to divvy up both transportation and service.

The agreement, rubricated by Eng. Ramon Valdivia Acosta from Cubana de Aviacion and Alberto Velasques Sanchez from Aerocaribbean S.A., will be in force beginning in June.

Cuba’s tour operator Havanatur and Palmares Co. inked an agreement for the marketing of Palmares-owned facilities stationed overseas.

Havanatur’s president Berto Perez explained the contract would not only permit to enhance the mesh of services, but also to give the Cuban destination’s choices a much wider media hype.

The first presentation of the 23rd Tourism Convention now underway in Varadero’s Plaza America Conference Center dealt with Holguin, a region teeming with highlands, fertile plains and beaches of powder-thin sand, the same place that inspired Genoa-born Admiral Christopher Columbus to dub it the most beautiful land human eyes had ever beheld.

Around 73 percent of hotel rooms in this tourist destination are pigeonholed in the four-star and five-star categories. As a whole, the circuit is growing at a 19 percent average annual rate.

Conrado Martinez Corona, chairman of Cuba’s Convention Bureau, talked to Caribbean News on the presentation of the Cuban destination for incentive travel and events at a time when the island nation advocates for a healthy, peaceful and safe tourism.

“For the first time, the primary sense of a tourism convention will revolve on the issue of incentive travel, congress and conventions. This is something that no doubt embraces great significance for the Convention Bureau that turned twenty years old just a few days ago.”