Winter tourism season booms in Cuba

A dozen tour buses idled along the Malecón and so many tourists were snapping pictures of the giant images of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos on a recent day at the Plaza de la Revolución that it looked like a Communist theme park.

Foreign visitors are coming to Cuba in droves this winter season. International visitors were up by 16 percent in January to a record 371,160 compared to the previous year, according to figures from Cuba’s Office of National Statistics and Information.

That came on the heels of a record-setting year in 2014 when 3.003 million international visitors arrived in Cuba.And that’s not counting hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans who travel to the island to visit family....The new U.S. rules allow visitors in 12 categories, including educational, research and humanitarian and participants in sporting events and performances, to travel to the island without seeking prior approval from the U.S. government. The new guidelines also make it easier for travel providers to plan trips and sell tickets. But Americans in those categories are all supposed to engage in purposeful travel — rather than lazy days at the beach and trips planned solely around tourism sites.

Presumably that means they won’t be visiting Jardines del Rey, a sandy archipelago with coral reefs off Cuba’s northern coast that is being developed as a rival to Cuba’s famed Varadero Beach. It too is having its best winter season ever.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/international-business/article13130942.html

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If you're going to Cuba you'd better have a reason for being there