MEXICO CITY — There are the people who want to honeymoon on the same beaches their grandparents did decades ago. Those who want to extend their Florida vacations with a quick jaunt to the island 90 miles south. Those who want to buy the Havana Club rum and the hand-rolled cigars and to see the mid-century jalopies before they disappear. And they want to go, like, today.
“The response in our office has been overwhelming,” said Tom Popper, president of insightCuba, an organization that has been running tours legally to Cuba since 2000. “We’re flooded. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
President Barack Obama’s announcement of his intention to normalize relations with Cuba and end the Cold War-era standoff has generated massive interest among Americans eager to see the Caribbean island for themselves, according to travel industry professionals.
But the regulations that restrict those trips to small-group educational and cultural exchanges are still in place, and it is not clear that they will change dramatically.
Although it might become easier to join a tour focused on cultural or educational themes, Americans will probably not be able to simply go sip rum in the sunshine.
“There is some lack of clarity of what it will mean,” said Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul Charters, a Miami-based travel agency for Cuba tours. “Everyone’s on hold to see what the Treasury Department will actually print.”
For tourists who play by the rules — rather than routing themselves through Mexico or the Dominican Republic and asking Cuban customs agents not to stamp their U.S. passports — options for visiting Cuba are quite restrictive.
Under the embargo, intended to block American money from reaching the Communist Castro regime, most U.S. visitors can only legally travel to Cuba under a license granted for one of 12 reasons, codified by Congress in 1996. These include professional research, religious activities, journalism and sports competitions.
During the Clinton administration, and then early in Obama’s presidency, “people-to-people” visits were expanded to allow regular citizens to visit Cuba in small groups for educational or cultural tours. The goal was to encourage “purposeful” travel — rather than dropping the cruise ship gangplank for any sun-seeking beachgoer.
Each year, about 3 million tourists visit Cuba, led by Canadians drawn to the country by discount tour packages. About half a million Americans visited Cuba last year, but the bulk of those were Cuban-Americans, who are allowed to visit close relatives on the island without restrictions.
Companies seeking to operate tours for people without Cuban heritage might have to provide hundreds of pages of documentation and wait several months to get licenses from the Treasury Department.
The Obama administration now plans to create a general license covering these 12 categories, which tour operators hope will cut down on bureaucracy and ultimately allow more Americans to visit. Travel companies expect that tourists might be able to operate on an honor system, in which they can claim their visits are “purposeful” without having to prove it.
Under the changes outlined, though, American resort or hotel chains won’t be allowed to move in to the island anytime soon. Solo tourists simply out for fun would still not be allowed to travel legally to Cuba.
If the U.S. government isn’t throwing open the floodgates to Cuban tourism, the Communist-ruled nation might not be ready for it either. The country is short of hotel rooms, taxi cabs, tour buses, airport gates, rental cars. The main terminal at Havana’s international airport has four baggage carousels, and lines to get through security can back up so far that flights get delayed as a result.
On the day of Obama’s speech, Eric Nadel, a radio announcer for the Texas Rangers baseball team, was finishing up a six-day tour of Cuba. His program, organized by insightCuba, offers a glimpse of the kind of tourism permitted now. He plans to go back with his wife in February and wants to organize more baseball trips next year.
“Before it gets flooded with Americans,” he said. “Who knows how fast that’s going to happen?”
