The Meliá Varadero, now in the all-inclusive category and boasting the same top-rated services it has always provided guests with, continues high on the list of the most coveted hotels by foreign tourists coming to the island nation. Its superb facilities, privileged beach strip and hardworking efforts to preserve the Cuban culture and the environment prove this assertion right. In this particular respect, the hotel has panned out to be a standard bearer in Cuba with live presentations of top musical performers and acts that reached its pinnacle with a project that came into being last year: the Carilda Oliver Labra Gallery. Painting and poetry get entwined in the columns of the Meliá Varadero as a permanent tribute to the great Matanzas-born poetess and an everlasting monument to Cuban culture.

New conveniences and attractions In an exclusive interview with Caribbean Tourist Excellencies, Dr. Nelson Hernandez Sosa, deputy general manager of the hotel, weighs in about a few elements that speak volumes of ever-improving services and facilities. “The shift from the conventional to the all-in category stands for a diversification of the Meliá Varadero product as part of Las Americas Resort compound. This switch in the system clinches the quality the conventional category was marked by and the permanence of that customized service guests love so much. The cultural programming remains very much in place and we continue having live presentations by top acts and artists as part of what has already become a tradition for this hotel.”

An additional value for the facility –one that's feverishly sought after by tour operators and guests alike- is environmental management ruled by strict international guidelines. Some of those guidelines include product labeling, an inner ecological walkway, minimum use of chemicals for water treatment, and the existence of endemic flora and wildlife on the premises. The combinations of such virtues prompted the resort to once again lay its hands on the Green Planet of Kuoni Award in 2002, a recognition hundreds of hotels all around the globe go for every year.

Perspectives The Meliá Varadero has set down on a victorious track from the word go. Its front office talks optimistically about the near future in which an all-out refurbishment of the smorgasbord restaurant and all of the rooms is in the pipeline. The resort is and will continue to be the flagship hotel of Cuban culture and the environment in Varadero, a place nature has privileged and man has equipped with pleasant surprises waiting for visitors every day.