Cuba likely to get influx of American tourists

Cuba likely to get influx of American tourists
Arthur Frommer
Sunday, February 6, 2011

Havana could become a mecca for U.S. visitors now that travel
restrictions have been eased.

The announcement by the Obama administration last month that it will
reinstate policies of the Clinton administration to permit travel to
Cuba for religious or educational reasons reminded me of two trips to
Cuba that I made during the time of the Clinton administration.

I went there under an exemption permitting travel to Cuba by
journalists. I traveled there legally, in other words, possessing papers
from the Treasury Department confirming my right to do so. I flew to
Kingston, Jamaica, and there boarded a short Air Jamaica flight to Havana.

The plane was jammed with young Americans, not one of whom was legally
authorized to make the trip. These were backpackers who were simply
making the trip in open defiance of U.S. regulations. On landing in
Cuba, their passports were not stamped by Cuban customs officials, and
no evidence existed that they had made the trip. Nearly all of them, as
far I could see, then took buses into Havana and proceeded to find
private-home accommodations where they could stay. (The Cubans permit
private families to set aside a room in their homes to accommodate
paying tourists.)

In other words, more important than the formal exemptions under the
regulations was a general lack of interest on the part of the Clinton
administration in enforcing the embargo against American travel to Cuba.
Our government had simply decided not to waste money or manpower on it.

And this, to my mind, is the probable atmosphere that the new exemptions
for religious and educational travel will reinstate. There will be
dozens of charter flights to Havana by religious organizations, but few
of the religious organizers will really be paying close attention to the
beliefs of the people joining those flights; anyone wanting to do so
will probably be permitted to join the trip for "religious" reasons.

And because there will be such a heavy number of American "religious
tourists" to Havana, there also will be a large number of Americans
traveling there without joining a religious charter. They will simply
take a flight to the Bahamas, Jamaica or Cancun, and then board a short
connecting flight to Cuba. They will risk such trips in the belief that
our American government will be less than fervent in its enforcement of
the travel embargo. I am not recommending such illegal conduct, but
simply predicting that attempted avoidance of the embargo will be
widespread.

All of this highlights the absurdity (and counterproductive nature) of
that embargo. When you visit Havana, you find - as I did - that the
streets are filled with tourists from all over the world: Canadian
tourists, British tourists, French tourists, German tourists, Japanese
tourists, tourists from all over. In particular, Canadians booking
air-and-land packages from Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa to Cuba are
currently flooding into Cuba and enjoying the low costs of high-rise
Cuban resorts in Varadero Beach, in Holguin, Cayo Coco and elsewhere.

Many such flights leave Canadian cities every week. The fact that
Americans cannot join them is heavily resented by many Cubans, even
those who do not support the Castro regime; in fact, numerous observers
claim that America's embargo is a factor in keeping the Castro regime in
power.

There is hope that Congress will ultimately put an end to this
counterproductive policy.

Arthur Frommer is a syndicated columnist. E-mail comments to
travel@sfchronicle.com.

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