Cuba tailor made holiday, nature and culture

Travel and tourism can both benefit and damage the environment, the economy, the social structure, culture and communities in any country. We know how mass tourism, unrestricted hotel building, poorly devised tours and environmentally destructive activities can bring money flooding in and governments have, in a spirit of short termism, been tempted to accept them. But experience teaches us that in the long term this sort of uncontrolled activity can be detrimental to the country's development, and we endeavour to do nothing to encourage it.

Cuba has been on the tourist map for some decades now, and many of the trips offered there are package holidays where visitors stay in fully inclusive hotels, often owned by multinationals. These do provide employment but much of the profit is syphoned off back to the chain’s home country and does not filter down to the community. The buildings are also frequently huge edifices designed without any reference to the natural or urban environment and without demonstrating any attempt to complement the landscape. The popular beach resort of Varadero was for many years virtually off-limits to Cubans, and tourists inhabited a sterilised ghetto. You don’t stay there on this holiday.

While it is true that your inclusive hotel on Cayo Santa Maria is one of the Spanish Melia chain, this hotel group takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously. In November 2009, the Institute of Responsible Tourism, endorsed by UNESCO, granted Meliá Hotels International certification as a Biosphere Hotel Company. This status is granted to companies which foster the social, cultural, economic and environmental development of the regions where they operate.

Other accommodation we have chosen for this economical holiday is locally run and has plenty of character; the Palacio del Marques de San Felipe in Havana is a refurbished historical property rescued from a neglected state, and the Hotel la Union in Cienfuegos has been transformed from a dilapidated mansion to a boutique-style hotel.

You will stay at La Moka Eco Lodge in Las Terrazas, which has developed as a self-sustainable community project to include one of the nicest lodges in Cuba. Rather than change the ethos of the project, the establishment of the lodge has given the residents more resources to enhance and grow the experiment. Complejo Turistico Las Terrazas is located in an area of 5,000ha, in which a plan for sustainable rural economy is being developed based on the rational use of natural resources for tourism. The buildings of Las Terrazas Community have been designed to blend with their surroundings. You will be benefitting them by staying there and even more so if you treat yourself to their coffee and contract their local guides.

You will visit the wildlife-packed Serra del Rosario Biosphere reserve and the Rancho Curujey where you will learn about the area’s sustainable development project.

Consistent with our aim of providing you with a street-level, nose-to-the-ground holiday you explore Havana’s and Cienfuegos’s historical centres on foot, and you’ll cycle through the Viñales Valley, thereby helping to conserve Cuba’s limited energy resources. You spend a couple of days based at Trinidad, Cuba’s well conserved UNESCO World Heritage Site, to give you a greater understanding of Cuba’s history.