• Submitted by: admin
• Travel and Tourism
• national
• 05 / 26 / 2010

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Some 900 German travel agents visited Cuba for a week, invited by the tour operator TUI, in order to get to this Caribbean destination and improve its promotion, local media said today.

The visit, which ends tomorrow, Tuesday, is part of TUI Inside 2010, An annual forum organized by the largest European tour operator, based in the German city of Hannover.

The program includes excursions to tourist resorts in Cayo Santa Maria, Varadero and Havana, mainly Spanish hotel group Sol Melia.

"The workers participating travel agencies will surely increase sales of trips to Cuba," he told Cuban television is esponsible for the event, Katrin May.

The previous edition of the forum for travel agents was held in Andalusia in southern Spain.

Germany is the largest source market of tourists in the world but ranks only fifth among the countries that send travelers to Cuba.

Of the 2.4 million people visited the Greater Antilles in 2009, only some 93,000 were German, some 7,000 less than last year.

According to industry experts, before the economic crisis the German tourism is gradually moving away from the Caribbean and increasingly preferring destinations closer sun and sand in Europe.

Source: Cubadebate, Google translation

(With information from DPA)