NEW YORK -- With only a few months left for limited numbers of
Americans to travel legally to Cuba before the Bush administration
revokes the right to operate people-to-people exchange programs,
plenty of operators are coming up with "last chance" offers.
But few of them have the name recognition of General Tours,
which recently partnered with Cross-Cultural Solutions to market
two tours, 11 departures in all, to Cuba before the end of the
year.
Cross-Cultural Solutions is licensed by the U.S. Department of
Treasury to operate educational tours to Cuba, and has been doing
it since March 2000.
The operator's package includes the required letter of
authorization, the license and the Cuban visa.
What General Tours brings to the table is the kind of name
recognition and market penetration that few other operators to Cuba
can match.
General Tours has been operating tours to exotic destinations
for more than half a century and moves tens of thousands of
travelers a year.
It was one of the first American operators into the Soviet Union
in 1955, one of the first into China when it opened in 1972 and one
of the first into Syria, Morocco, Jordan, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The reputation can be helpful in selling a destination that is
still exotic enough to engender some uncertainty in many Americans.
And yet Cuba has an undeniable attraction.
Richard Newcomb, the director of the U.S. Treasury Department's
Office of Foreign Assets Control, estimated that 150,000-200,000
Americans traveled to Cuba in 2001, with one-third of them
violating the U.S. government prohibitions.
Travel & Leisure readers recently voted Cuba the World's
Best Island in its World's Best Awards survey.
Clearly there is a demand, but restrictions have stifled normal
market dynamics.
General Tours executive vice president Richard Hefler said he
believes the departures will sell out.
"Cuba has a very deep appeal to American travelers for a number
of reasons," he said. "It's always been an intriguing place. It was
the site of the Spanish American War, where the battleship Maine
mysteriously blew up. It was where Teddy Roosevelt rose to fame.
Havana became notorious during prohibition. Ernest Hemingway lived
there and wrote 'The Old Man and the Sea' there."
"When [Fidel] Castro took over it became an outpost of the
Soviet Union and then there was the Cuban missile crisis," Hefler
added. "It has always had a prominent place in American
consciousness."
And now, Hefler said, there is the attraction of seeing a
destination that may be off limits soon. "Though it's an aging
socialist regime in a post-cold war world, there is a sense that
the Cuba with the vintage American cars in a few years may not be
available," he said.
General Tours is offering a seven-night from $2,399 per person,
double, and a 13-night trip that's priced from $3,399. Both prices
include roundtrip air from Miami or Cancun. Roundtrip air from New
York is an additional $240 per person.
To book, call General Tours at (800) 221-2216 or log onto www.generaltours.com.