The Floodgates Slowly Open as Additional Tour Operators Announce Extensive Programs to Cuba

Add Friendly Planet Travel to the slowly-expanding list of tour operators that will be offering extensive tour programs to Cuba. Starting with a departure from Miami on Sunday, October 23, and continuing through mid-April, that well-known packager will be offering "humanitarian missions" to Cuba, all as described in a special segment of its website found at www.friendlyplanet.com/sponsored/cuba.html .

[image error] Photo Caption: Havana street. Adrien Broom/Frommers.com Community

Unlike Insight Cuba ( www.insightcuba.com ), which does not yet include airfare in the price of its recently-announced program to Cuba (but will be guaranteeing a charter flight from Miami, and perhaps soon from New York-JFK as well), Friendly Planet does include a round-trip charter flight between Miami and Havana in the price of its once-a-month departures between October and April. It also includes Cuban-mandated health insurance and virtually every other element of an all-inclusive trip, resulting in a total price of $3,099 per person in October, November and December, and $3,199 per person in January, February, March and April, for a tour spending seven nights in Cuba.

Friendly Planet's tours place participants in a four-star Havana hotel for five nights and in an all-inclusive four-star beach resort (near the city of Trinidad) for two nights, and feature visits to every major attraction in the Cuban capital. The packages become "humanitarian" in aspect, according to the tour operator, because participants are brought on one visit to a Cuban elementary school, where they make a donation of school supplies (pens and pencils, paper, and drawing supplies) to the students. On another afternoon, they visit a medical clinic and make a donation of medical supplies (like pain relief medicines, syringes and antibiotics) to that facility. Participants are given an allowance of 15 pounds per person of humanitarian supplies that they can bring with them on the charter flight to Cuba.

You'll find the program described in great detail at the website address listed above (but not on the standard Friendly Planet website). This is clearly among the first of many dozens of such programs that will be announced by America's tour operators in the weeks ahead. For all intents and purposes, it will now be possible for Americans seriously interested in seeing Cuba to make that trip.