The Cuban Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) approved a regulation for the activity of national travel agencies, which supplies them primacy in a gaggle of tourist activities and services on the island.
Resolution 132/2021, published within the extraordinary Gaceta Oficial 46, indicates that national travel agencies are the one ones authorized to perform procedures equivalent to the issuance, reception and repair of tourists, the representation of foreign tour operators, and the design and marketing of tourist packages.
The regulation establishes that Cuban legal entities or individuals that market services “made up of groups, programs, circuits, excursions or other modalities, must accomplish that through national travel agencies, aside from those authorized to accomplish that directly,” in keeping with the Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) news agency.
The text also indicates that these agencies can be in control of tourist guide hiring and servicing, the leasing and sale of airline capacities, the procedures for the extension of visas, and the selling of tourist cards.
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In response to the regulation, which can come into effect next month, national travel agencies can even mediate within the sale of reservations and services in every kind of accommodation, transportation, insurance policies, and non-hotel services.
In the identical way, they’re the one ones authorized to sell phone cards, postcards, maps, and tourist guides, and so they can be in control of organizing the programs of international events and meetings that happen in Cuba, said the ACN in its report, in keeping with which branches and representations of foreign travel agencies on the island must contract all services through national agencies, except accommodation capacities, which might be done directly.
The regulation indicates that to create an agency of this sort requires the approval of the MINTUR, which can demand an outline of the activity, the draft statutes, and the economic feasibility study, as a part of the appliance.
The report, alternatively, doesn’t specify the character of those agencies, if only the state agencies are considered or if agencies could possibly be created as a cooperative or by private initiative.
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Thus far, a gaggle of activities for the non-state sector related to tourism is allowed, equivalent to the rental of rooms and gastronomic and transportation services, however it isn’t clear if there can be new openings at the least within the near future. This, despite the demands of skilled sectors, equivalent to tourist guides, to perform their work autonomously, and the recent government measures to expand self-employment.
