Attendants from sixty countries at the Tourism Convention

Over a thousand attendants from as many as 60 nations are crowding Varadero’s Plaza America Conference Center for the 23rd Tourism Convention in Cuba. As Cuban tourism vice minister Marta Maiz put it on the eve of the grand opening of the island nation’s premiere tourist marketplace, countries like Croatia, Hungary, India, Iran, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Thailand and Turkey are making their debut in this year’s edition.

Latin America and the Caribbean are represented by twenty nations, including the host country, while ministers and high-ranking officials from Aruba, Guatemala, Turkey, the United States and Mexico are also taking part in the event.

The convention will stretch out until Friday only to resume on Saturday in Havana with an event on tourist promotion, an opportunity that many here eye as the right framework for cutting deals over negotiations that had started the year before, for the presentation of new-fangled products and for lots of other activities to foster expert-to-expert exchanges.

Mrs. Maiz averred that more than 60 U.S. charter providers and tour operators have turned up for the convention whose slogan reads Cuba: A Compelling Destination.