• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 07 / 27 / 2011

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Since the Obama administration loosened restrictions on Cuba travel, nearly 30 groups have been authorized to offer people-to-people exchanges. The first trips leave in August.

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD.MiamiHerald.com. Travel providers and other groups are scrambling to secure licenses and organize people-to-people exchanges in Cuba after the U.S. government relaxed restrictions and decided to allow a wider variety of Americans to visit the Caribbean island for the first time in 7 1/2 years.

So far, the Treasury Department has issued nearly 30 licenses to organizations that say they will provide “purposeful travel,’’ which will allow Americans to reach out to everyday Cubans in “support of their desire to freely determine their country’s future.’’

Although Cuba-Americans can now travel freely to the island if they receive a visa from Cuba and travel is allowed for other Americans who fall into a limited number of categories, the United States has barred people-to-people visits since the end of 2003 when former President George W. Bush reversed a policy begun during the Clinton administration.

Insight Cuba, a company that ran people-to-people exchanges prior to the rollback on such travel, looks like it will be first with the new people-to-people exchanges. It plans to send its first four groups to Cuba on August 11. A clock on its website ticks down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to departure.

Groups ranging from the Harvard Alumni Association to luxury travel provider Abercrombie & Kent — it pitches its trip as “Cuba: The Forbidden Isle Revealed’’ — to Witness for Peace also are ready for Cuba travel.

There seems to be plenty of demand.

The Oct. 26-Nov. 1 Harvard trip, which promises to “unravel the richness of Cuban culture” and includes a stop at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to discuss U.S.-Cuba relations, is waiting list only.

A&K, which will be working with the Foundation for Caribbean Studies — the nonprofit that actually holds the license — began advertising last week for 13 trips it plans between September and next April. All have already sold out.

“We knew there would be interest, but this is incredible,’’ said Jean Fawcett, an A&K spokeswoman. “We’re taking names for a wait list and are planning to add more trips in 2012.”

Witness for Peace says it will offer talk “with ordinary Cubans who will tell you about their achievements, challenges and daily struggles.’’ Its 10-night trip in December costs $1,550 — a relative bargain in the world of people-to-people exchanges.

The five-night Harvard trip starts at $3,880 per person double occupancy and doesn’t include airfare to and from Cuba.

And Abercrombie & Kent, which began as a safari outfitter in Kenya, promises its Cuba trips will meet the same high standards its travelers have come to expect. Its 10-night tours, which are priced from $4,325 double occupancy, visit Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Havana and Matanzas.

A&K travelers will stay on a club-level-type floor at the Hotel Nacional, eat almost exclusively at paladares (home restaurants) whose menus have been planned with A&K staff, travel in new air-conditioned motor coaches with leather seats and go through VIP customs and immigration check-in, said Fawcett.

But along the way, she said, there will be plenty of opportunities to interact with Cubans. “We don’t want people to feel like tourists. We want this to be an authentic people-to-people exchange,’’ Fawcett said.

A&K travelers, however, will get “insider access,’’ meaning, for example, they’ll have an early-morning tour of Finca Vigía, Ernest Hemingway’s home, before it opens to the public, she said. Then they’re scheduled to talk with fishermen in the nearby village of Cojimar, which helped inspire The Old Man and the Sea.

For decades, as part of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, the United States has limited Americans from going to Cuba and spending money — although there have been exceptions for travelers such as Cuban-Americans, journalists, those on professional and academic research trips and people on humanitarian and religious missions.

In announcing the new travel policy, the Obama administration said people-to-people exchanges would support civil society as well as the free flow of information.

This year, it also loosened regulations for educational and religious trips to Cuba allowing universities, schools and religious organizations to make trips without seeking licenses from Washington. A Florida law, however, bars public schools and universities from funding Cuba trips but other students may go as long as they receive credit and pursue a study program of at least three weeks.

The new rules are not playing well with South Florida’s Cuban-American Congressional delegation.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, and Rep. David Rivera, both Republicans, have introduced amendments that reset the Cuban travel policy to the more restrictive regulations of the Bush administration, not only eliminating people-to-people exchanges but also barring Cuban-Americans from visiting more than once every three years for family reunifications. Remittances also would be limited to $1,200 and the definition of who would qualify as family tightened up.

President Obama has threatened a veto.

Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wrote a letter to Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control after she saw a travel agency quoted in a Monroe, La. newspaper saying the “first wave of pure tourists from America will hit the friendly skies Aug. 11.’’ She called that an “egregious misrepresentation’’ of the Cuba travel guidelines and wanted to know what OFAC was doing to prevent or correct such activity by travel agents.

OFAC issued an advisory Monday saying it was aware of media misstatements giving the impression that the “U.S. now allows for virtually unrestricted travel to Cuba.’’ It reminded travelers that there are regulations governing such travel, including spending limits and a prohibition on buying any souvenirs except for informational materials.

Travel organizations that have received licenses say Treasury has been strict, sometimes asking for additional details and definitions, and insisting that there be meaningful interactions between Cubans and travelers.

“These trips are highly structured. We spend no time at the beaches and will be concentrating on historic sites,’’ said Burt Altman, a retired professor who with his wife Norma will be directing an April 2012 tour for Learning in Retirement, a program geared for retired or semi-retired people that is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. They plan trips to schools, hospitals, foundations and artistic organizations and will have daily seminars “to discuss what we’ve learned,’’ Altman said.

One of the stipulations of the license, he said, was that “people would be kept busy at all times.”

Most of the people-to-people trips, which generally don’t include more than 35 people, will leave from Miami and don’t include airfare.

Insight Cuba, which will take 16 people per group, sent out its application for a license the day guidelines were issued in the Federal Register in January and received its license June 28. “We knew something would change, so we kept up our relationships in Cuba,’’ said Tom Popper, director of Insight Cuba. “It was like lifting up the hood of a car that had been in a garage and figuring out what needed to be done to get the trips running again.’’

Popper said Insight Cuba is targeting travelers over 50. “Group travel is appealing to them and the history of Cuba also is a draw for them,’’ Popper said.

Insight Cuba offers a variety of trips. Prices for the eight-day music and art experience start at $2,495. Among the attractions: meeting with Afro-Cuban artists residing in Calléjon de Hamel, a visit to Egrem, Cuba’s largest recording label, and salsa lessons.

In the next year, Popper said, Insight Cuba hopes to take 5,000 to 7,000 American travelers to Cuba and is offering 130 departure dates.

If no restrictions are placed on the new people-to-people policy, thousands more Americans are expected to travel to Cuba this year and next.

In 2009, the Obama administration made it easier for Americans traveling for professional, religious and humanitarian reasons to go to Cuba, and since then the number of U.S. citizens visiting the island has been ticking up. The number has increased from 41,900 in 2008 to 63,000 last year.

But that number pales compared to the number of Cuban-American travelers, who are counted separately from other U.S. visitors to the island. Air charter providers to Cuba estimate around 320,000 Cuban-Americans visited the island last year — although some of those travelers made multiple trips.

By next year, the face of Cuba travel could look quite different, said Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul Charters.

It’s too early to estimate the numbers of travelers on people-to-people exchanges, Guild said, but he expects academic travel to become a “large category.’’ Already, he said, Marazul has requests from two dozen schools for trips in January and February. And he expects Cuban-American travel to continue to grow with as many as 375,000 to 400,000 people making trips in 2011.

Source: //www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/26/v-fullstory/2331971/