With the principal aim of teaching international visitors about Cuba’s social project, the Amistur S.A travel agency is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and consolidating its work with different networks of friendship with Cuba across the world, acting as a bridge between peoples.
Since it’s founding, over 110,000 visitors from 126 countries have participated in its varied specialist tourism programs, offering the opportunity to learn about the island and interact directly with the population, while also promoting values of peace, love, friendship and solidarity.
Tours are designed to show visitors different areas across the island’s 15 provinces, promote exchanges between Cubans and foreigners, and combine activities displaying Cuban history, culture and identity.
Many of its clients are affiliated with the over 2,000 organizations of friendship with Cuba that exist in 158 countries. Solidarity Brigades and Volunteer Work schemes represent the most popular programs, both of which are organized by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), the agency’s parent body.
Jorge Adolfo Abigantud Raez, director general of Amistur, highlighted that the agency’s top market is currently the United States. “We have organized visits for over 50,000 U.S. citizens since the organization was founded,” he noted.
Amistur emerged in 1994 as a joint venture which sought to provide an alternative source of financing for ICAP, at a time when Cuba was suffering the harsh effects of the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the U.S. in the wake of the fall of the socialist camp in Eastern Europe. Two year’s later, Amistur became a 100% Cuban owned entity.
Tours are designed to reflect diverse interests, in the arts, culture, architecture, sports, trade union sector, ecology, during which participants are also shown the most important achievements of the Revolution in the sphere of health, education, citizen safety, and guarantee of women’s and children’s rights, among others.
The agency also promotes academic and cultural events, congresses, specialist excursions, cruise travel and individual tourism, supported by government institutions, the state network of hotel and non-hotel facilities, as well as private bed and breakfasts and small businesses.
“Once we complete our program of activities,” stated Abigantud Raez “we visit neighborhoods where enriching exchanges take place between visitors and Cubans. Grandmothers offer participants cups of coffee; residents show them their houses and talk about their lifestyle; children sing and dance spontaneously; a pensioner tells them about his participation in different historic moments of the Revolution; or an international collaborator tells them about their experience offering services in other countries. All of this results in an interesting exchange.”
The director highlighted that the outcome of surveys and focus groups reveals that over 98% of clients are satisfied with Amistur’s service. Currently, the organization’s 36 workers are happily celebrating its 20th anniversary, in addition to contributing more than six million pesos to the Cuban economy every year. Such results make them strong contenders to win the National Vanguard Collective Award (presented by the Trade Union of Public Administration) and the Economic Efficiency Prize, awarded by the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba, according to union official Marcia Artiles Fernández.
Economic management specialist Artiles Fernández, speaking exclusively with Granma International, noted that staff work with a center for orphaned children. “We often visit the center, we bring school materials, games, we offer love and put on cultural shows for the children,” she noted.
The group is also renowned for its financial contributions to the defense of the homeland, its actions in support of the elderly and up-to-date political training provided to guides, who work directly with visitors and are responsible for showing them what life is like in the country.
“Working with Amistur means experiences, learning about Cuban society and its political system,” highlighted the young Leinnay Calixte Roig, who now works for the agency after interning with Amistur to carry out research into promotional communication while studying Tourism at university.
She joined the team after graduating and highlighted the warm welcome she received from her colleagues. “I enjoy working here, professionally speaking I feel like there is great depth to my work, my opinions are heard, and I am consulted in the decision making process. I participate in all spheres of the organization, the daily work and union and political activities,” she highlighted.
A phrase by national hero José Martí perfectly sums up the importance of institutions like Amistur: “Tourist agencies are not mere institutions for whimsical and adventure pursuits, but vital to our times and our countries, and should be established by honorable rather than predatory merchants.”
