• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 07 / 05 / 2011

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Tour operators set to begin charters to communist island. Peter Orsi/ Associated Press

Havana— Washington has begun issuing travel licenses that promise to bring thousands more U.S. visitors each year on legal trips to Cuba, just 90 miles off Florida but off-limits to most Americans.

Nine tour operators have been granted licenses to run people-to-people exchanges since May, said a U.S. Treasury Department representative who was not authorized to be quoted by name on the matter.

The representative declined to comment Friday on how many applications have been filed, were rejected or are still under consideration, but said Treasury has been receiving an average of 10 applications each week since new guidelines were published in April.

A handful of organizations confirm that they have received permission, and one company that got its license Tuesday is already booking four inaugural trips for Aug. 11, with space for 100 people.

"We immediately went into launch mode, which was what we were preparing for quite some time," said Tom Popper, director of Insight Cuba, which operated people-to-people trips from 2000 until they were canceled by the George W. Bush administration after 2003. "It was a great first day. We were actually registering participants within three hours of bringing up the website."

Insight Cuba expects to run about 130 trips a year to the island and take 5,000-7,000 people, Popper said.

Other groups have more modest plans, but with dozens of operators seeking licenses, industry experts expect a return to the levels of 2000-2003, when tens of thousands traveled on people-to-people licenses annually.

Even before the relaxed guidelines, about 63,000 Americans traveled to the island in 2010, according to Cuban statistics published last week.

Opponents of the policy said it is tantamount to propping up President Raul Castro and his brother Fidel. The trips are thinly veiled tourism, they said, a kind of end run around the decades-old economic embargo that aims to weaken the Cuban government and pressure for political change.

Early confirmed licensees include the Harvard Alumni Association and Learning in Retirement, which is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and plans an eight-day, $4,300 Santiago-to-Havana tour for spring.

"The major benefit is developing new awarenesses, destroying some of the myths that people might have about Cuba and Cubans," said Burt Altman, a retired education professor who obtained the license for Learning in Retirement and is organizing the trip.

Source: From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110704/