The options for exotic offsite meeting and incentive travel destinations is close to becoming one country bigger with relaxed travel rules initiated by the Obama administration in January. An incentive program there isn’t possible yet, but it appears to be a matter of time. Under the new rules, which took effect as part of a deal to restore diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, Americans who qualify to travel under one of 12 categories no longer have to apply for a license before they travel — a process that, in the past, could take weeks or months.
There is little doubt among incentive travel professionals that interest in Cuba as a destination would be high. “A lot of our clients are talking about it,” says Ron Officer, chairman and CEO of Creative Group, Inc., a provider of corporate meetings and incentive travel services based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. “You need that adventuresome customer who, as soon as it’s open for business, he’ll be there.”
Cuba certainly has the panache that incentive travel planners look for — an experience that program participants have not had and are unlikely to seek out on their own. Many high-performing salespeople have been to destinations around the world through annual incentive programs. A chance to see Cuba could instill new energy into an incentive campaign.
“Interest will be high because it has been a place that has been difficult to get to,” says Kurt Paben, senior vice president of channel and employee loyalty at AIMIA, a Minneapolis-based loyalty solutions company. “There is always a desire on the part of high-end, seasoned travelers to ‘put a notch on their belt’ on where they’ve been.”
There are factors that need to be worked out before any U.S.-based company will send employees to Cuba, most notably the political debate whether the travel embargo should have been lifted. Cuba remains one of the most repressive nations in the world, according to human rights groups and the State Department, which have cataloged the ways it smothers dissent through arbitrary arrests, government intimidation, selective prosecution and control of the news media. Critics of the Obama administration say there has been no commitment from the Castro brothers that those practices will change.
“We would make sure the political piece of this is calm,” Paben says. “You need to ensure that there is no risk of backlash on a company for taking a group to Cuba.”
Bringing groups to politically sensitive destinations is not new for AIMIA or Creative Group. Paben says the company (then Carlson Marketing) was among the first to bring U.S. incentive programs to Russia and South Africa, while Officer says Creative Group made early forays for its incentive travel clients to Vietnam, St. Petersburg, Russia and China.
And then there is the question of infrastructure. Part of the charm of Cuba is that it is a country that in many ways seems frozen in time. Officer, who visited Cuba in 1999, says there are European-owned hotels there that could handle a small incentive program, but nothing along the lines of the five-star resorts that incentive program participants are accustomed to. The country has a long way to go before it reaches that point.
Commenting to the New York Times on the influx of U.S. travelers that are expected as a result of the looser travel restrictions, John S. Kavulich, a senior policy adviser at the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a nonprofit group of businesses, stated, “Where are all these people going to eat? Where are all these people going to stay? The excitement, the exuberance, is just out in another galaxy. You can only do what can be done.”
The challenge, however, will be to get your group to Cuba before it’s no longer Cuba. “You’ll have those clients who will want to wait until there is a Marriott there, but for the people who have it on their bucket list, they want to get there before it really changes and is no longer recognizable,” Officer says.
