Following an exhibit of classic cars at the traditional Paseo del Prado in Havana, the capital’s Grand Theater hosted Thursday night the gala for the 100th issue of the Caribbean Tourist Excellence magazine, featuring the presentation of Cuba’s National Ballet Company, the Flamenco Boulevard group –made up of Andalusian performers- and the Junior Symphonic Orchestra.

No matter how easy it might be said, reaching a pinnacle like the 100th issue of a specialized publication, based on constructive, objective and creative journalism, takes a lot of work. For the Excelencias Group, this premise has guided the company to the 100th issue of Excelencias Turisticas del Caribe y las Americas magazine, one of its flagship publications.

Jose Carlos de Santiago, president and CEO of the Excelencias Group, and Nicolas Muela, director of the Doña Maria de las Mercedes Foundation, signed an agreement whereby both institutions commit themselves to collaborating in a number of activities within the framework of Iberian-American nations.

As part of the activity program of Excelencias Group at the recently finished 2011 MITT in Moscow, and as a continuation of the process that kicked off during the latest edition of FITUR, the president of our company, Jose Carlos de Santiago, presented Galina Lyssenko with the 2010 Excelencias Award as a recognition “for the excellent work done in the opening of the Russian market for the Dominican Republic”. Isabel Vasquez, Director of International Promotion for this Caribbean island’s Tourism Division, also attended this ceremony.

The Excelencias Awards were created in 2005 by the Excelencias Group with a view to foster excellence in different spheres, all of them tied up to both tourism and culture. Since then, the awards have become a benchmark for people and institutions linked to this major sector and willing to make excellence their common denominator in their respective fields.

The Excelencias Prize was awarded to the Civil Defense, the National League of Writers and Artists (UNEAC) and the Ministry of Culture, by Jose Carlos de Santiago, president and editor-in-chief of the Excelencias Group, a famous international promoter of Latin America and the Caribbean’s natural, heritage, cultural and touristic values through different world-class printed and digital publications.