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Washington Convention Center. (Foto/Photo: Walter E. Cortesía / Courtesy: Washington.org)

The key infrastructures that make a country be visited freely and share the income generated by its local travel industry include airlift; gastronomy as a game changer with a touch of authenticity; safety, which is indispensable for the freedom of the tourist and his ability to handpick a destination, as well as the healthcare needed to round out that safety.
The Dominican Republic is working diligently to meet those development goals, and to that aim the recent designation by the Iberian-American Gastronomy Academy of Santo Domingo as the Capital of the Caribbean Gastronomic Culture will certainly help the nation get that Excellence hallmark so necessary to take its local travel offer up a notch on the quest for top-quality tourism.
For its part, Cuba remains on a roll with the construction of new hotels and the refurbishment of historic buildings. How could someone fail to stay at the Manzana de Gomez, the latest hotel opened by Kempinsky, so close to the Havana Capitol? The island nation is working hard to raise the quality bar, opening new routes –like the one Plus Ultra, the Spanish airline, will launch on July 1 between Barcelona and Havana.
Another tourism offer highly coveted in Cuba these days is the stay in “private homes”, something that brings travelers closer to the people and their traditions.
The Excelencias magazine, as well as caribbeannewsdigital.com, our online newspaper that includes news coverage and updates from over 60 travel and tourism fairs around the world, such as IPW in the U.S., take the image of the Caribbean countries and their most resounding realities to the professionals attending those tradeshows.
The Excelencias Group’s gastronomic seminars underway these days, both in Panama (May 27) and in Havana (June 7, 8 and 9), make contributions of their own for the sake of these countries’ development.
The painstaking job our office in Ecuador is conducting to showcase natural beauties and gastronomy will hopefully be one more step in the right direction to put this country on the international travel map with the kind of success this nation really deserves.
The Excelencias Awards (www.premios.excelencias.com), that this year were doled out in Spain, Cuba and Mexico, recognize personalities and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean for their efforts, initiatives and significance of the job done through the year in the travel, artistic and gastronomic fields. Those are further contributions chipped in by the Excelencias Group, very much in sync with the mission we have zeroed in on from the word go: help in the advance and improvement of the travel industry in this region.