HAVANA — It was mid-May, and independent tour consultant
Frank Slater found himself leading his 22nd tour of Cuba, guiding a group at
Vinca La Figia, Ernest Hemingway’s home from 1939 to 1960 in the village of San
Francisco de Paula, about 9 miles outside Havana. Now a museum, it is a popular
tourist stop for most visitors to Cuba.
Slater was serving as tour director on Friendly Planet’s
nine-day people-to-people “Colors of Cuba” itinerary, similar to the company’s
popular “Discover Havana” but a few days longer, with more stops.
Although Slater consults for multiple tour operators, this
was his second Cuba tour in May with Friendly Planet, with two more slated for
June. His travels in 22 years have taken him to 90 countries, and Cuba has
become a favorite. He recently calculated that in the previous 30 months, “one
out of every six days of my life has been in Cuba. I love it here. … I take
photos on every trip, and I always see something new.”
Over his almost three years visiting the island, he has seen
the Cuban market grow to the point that qualified tour guides are getting much
harder to find. As more tour companies come onboard, he said, they are “driving
up the need for more certified tour directors to accompany these tours, plus
the additional need for Cuban professional guides.”
The most recent entrants in the crowded field of companies
offering people-to-people programs include Central Holidays and Apple
Vacations.
Frank Slater takes many photos while on the island, like this one of Cuban street musicians.
What has prepared Slater for his work in Cuba are his
experiences from 20-plus years of working both as a tour guide (a local expert
who leads groups around his or her own city or state) and as a tour director
(an expert who accompanies groups from start to finish from city to city, state
to state and country to country, working with tour operators).
From September to June, months when he generally is not
traveling the world, he divides his time between his grandkids in Denver and
serving as CEO of the Denver-based International Guide Academy (IGA), of which
his son, Daniel, is president.
In business since 1973, the IGA has certified hundreds of
guides and tour directors for placement with numerous tour operators whose
itineraries span the globe.
The pace of travel to Cuba has accelerated since December,
when President Obama loosened travel restrictions. That pace can be seen in
visitor numbers, which in June alone topped 218,000, a 20.6% increase over June
2014, according to Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information.
While the figures did not include a breakdown of U.S.
visitors, the year is shaping up to be a record-breaker and is expected to top
the record 3 million visitors last year.
“What has prepared me for work in Cuba is my knowledge of
managing tours over the years,” Slater said. “I prepared for my tours in Cuba
with extensive reading, website research and watching videos about Cuba to
learn about the history, culture, food, geography, political situations and the
like. This is what all tour managers should do when assigned a new location.”
U.S. tour operators generally contract with a Cuban tour
company for the services of a local guide who accompanies the tour director and
the group. Slater said one of the Cuban companies is San Cristobal, a
government-run travel agency whose guides specialize in Old Havana and are
particularly knowledgeable regarding the restorations and rebuilding projects
in the old city.
A church in the city of Vinales in the western part of Cuba, a stop on several Cuban itineraries.
“San Cristobal’s guides are great,” Slater said. “They all
have gone through an extensive training program with their company for all of
Cuba, not just Havana.”
What Slater looks for in a Cuban guide is “good teamwork,
friendly, flexible and supportive of each other, and this has been the case
with all the San Cristobal guides with whom I’ve worked.”
He said, “Our curriculum does change over the years in order
to keep up to date with the changing demographics of travelers. About 20% of
our instructors have worked in Cuba, so many of the examples in our training
courses and classes are about activity and tours in Cuba.”
To meet growing demand, the IGA has added certification
programs this year and will add still more in 2016.
“Additional classes and locations where our courses are
taught have been added due to the increased demand from people looking to work
as tour directors,” Slater said. “While a few have Cuba on their horizon as a
place to work, their entry into the industry is not based solely on Cuba.”
Tour directors don’t teach the destination, he said, but
they do help transition passengers from culture to culture on a multi-country
trip.
“Most people are disposed to have a good time, to learn and
take in new experiences,” Slater said. “The Cuba traveler in particular is well-educated,
well-traveled and knows the guidelines, follows the rules and is eager to see
everything.”
While travel to Cuba has been evolving quickly, Slater said
he feels that other changes will come slowly.
“I suspect it will be a longer time than most think before
all the restrictions are lifted,” he said. “Once lifted, I expect to see U.S.
investments in Cuba, but I believe it will be over years.”
As the embargo is lifted, he said, “I believe that the Cuban
people will see positive improvements in access to medicines, foods, the
Internet, goods and services, which are now affected by the embargo.”
Several tour operators said they are seeing a shortage of
tour guides in Cuba, “let alone good tour guides,” in the words of Ronen Paldi,
president of Ya’lla Tours USA.
“At Ya’lla, we have a pool of excellent guides, between
eight and 10 of them, all young, dynamic and very dedicated, and we have never
experienced that shortage,” Paldi said. “In peak season, when other companies
were subjected to Spanish-speaking guides with an English translator, we kept
running our operation with our guides both for groups and FITs, as we do all
the time.”
A Cuban farmer.
Tom Popper, president of Insight Cuba, agreed that shortages
of Cuban tour guides, “especially high-quality guides,” are real.
“There also is a shortage of tour leaders who accompany the
groups,” he said. “Both shortages are due to the increased demand from groups
and new entrants into the marketplace.”
Insight Cuba’s longtime presence, said Popper, “gives us a
leg up regarding access to the best resources, including restaurant
reservations, hotel rooms, Cuban tour guides and U.S. tour leaders. We
fortunately are not experiencing any shortages.”
Popper said that Cubans value established relationships with
individuals and companies and provide the necessary resources to those
companies first. Moreover, he said, the country’s leaders understand the burden
that the increased demand has placed on the tourism infrastructure.
“Cuba is adapting, but training new guides and finding
seasoned guides takes time,” he said. “They also need to experience leading
groups of Americans so they can better understand the preferences of the American
market.”
Friendly Planet launched its people-to-people programs to
Cuba in 2011, and since then, “we’ve become experts at building relationships
within the destination, from securing the best accommodations to sourcing local
cultural experiences and activities,” said President Peggy Goldman.
A flag in Cuba carries stylized visages of revolutionaries Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.
These relationships have also enabled the company to work
with well-informed tour directors and guides.
“We’ve not had any shortage of experts to lead our programs
in Cuba, but I expect that newer entries to the market may face challenges due
to increased competition,” Goldman said. “Many of our directors and guides come
to us through referrals from existing tourism entities in Cuba as well as our
association with the International Guide Academy.”
When Tauck launched its Cuba programs in 2012, the company
used tour directors (or Tauck directors) already on staff who were fluent in
Spanish.
“We’ve had no issues in sourcing local guides,” said
Katharine Bonner, senior vice president. “There is a strong supply in Cuba who
speak excellent English, and large numbers have university degrees in American
history.”
She pointed out that being a local guide for American groups
is a sought-after job in Cuba, as local guides can make more money than many
other Cubans.