Your Tour Guide in Cuba

Your small group will be accompanied the whole way by a local tour guide, also sometimes known as a tour leader, tour conductor, or TC. This person will be your guide, translator, interpreter, tour coordinator, and group leader. Because we believe that first-hand experience makes a trip authentic, we choose native guides. This ensures that your tour will be a rich cultural experience. It also means that Cubans are benefitting from employment opportunities and valuable income rather than foreigners. Our tour guides are chosen for their expert local knowledge, communication skills, organisational abilities, understanding of the society, its history and culture, affability, and their ability to entertain a group. You will more likely end up seeing them as your friend who organises all the logistics for you and makes your experience hassle free.

CLICK HERE to see personal profiles of our tour guides.

Comprehensive Service

The tour guide will organise group activities, introduce you to the local people, and give you an insight into the Cuban culture, its history, its unique way of life, and explain to you this complex and hard to understand society. He can take you to Cuba's natural highlights, help you follow your special interests, introduce you to his friends, and maybe even find a sacred Santeria ceremony or a Rumba street party. He knows the places you visit like the back of his hand and can show you to the coolest hidden corners and out of the way places that you won't find in any guidebook about Cuba.

Freedom and flexibility are fundamental components of our tours so if you would rather explore on your own, you can use the guide for suggestions and he can point you in the right direction. On most of our tours there is plenty of free time, so you can use this to stick closely to your tour guide and hang out with the group, or go your own way and make your own discoveries. The choice is yours.

Professional Integrity of the Tour Guide

Our tour guides don't take commissions - tipping the guide is suggested.

The tour guides in Cuba are paid a daily wage for their valuable services and therefore have no need (and are not permitted) to take commissions from shops, restaurants, or organizations offering local excursions.

Taking commissions of this kind is a regular practice in group tours all over the world and especially common in Cuba. We believe that this practice seriously compromises the guide's professional integrity and adversely affects the delivery of an honest and transparent value for money service to the client. We take all measures reasonably possible, to stop this happening.

Tipping Your Tour Leader

One of the measures we use to ensure an optimised service from the tour guide is to encourage you to tip your guide appropriately at the end of the tour of Cuba. We suggest you do this commensurate with your your level of satisfaction of the guide's services (of course there is no obligation for you to tip at all!). If the guide is motivated by making money and is aware that she/he will be tipped according to her/his performance, instead of looking for commissions, kick-backs or money on the side, the guide will make all efforts to maximise your enjoyment of the trip at the best possible value for money for you. So she/he won't be taking you to a tourist shop with elevated prices, to take a cut from the sales, or to a restaurant that will overcharge you so that he can fill his pockets.

It is completely up to you how much you tip the guide, and remember there is no obligation to tip at all. However, if you want a guideline as to how much would be a suitable reward, we suggest from 10CUC to 50CUC per person, depending on your level of satisfaction and financial situation (50CUC for outstanding service). You can do this in a personal way with an envelope and a thank you note, or you can contribute to a group tip, as many groups have done, or any way in which you feel comfortable.

Tour Guide Bonuses for Excellent Performance

Additional to this, at the end of youe tour in Cuba we request feedback from you about the services of the guide (and all other aspects of your tour), through an on-line evaluation form that we will send you via email at the end of your tour of Cuba. We take this very seriously so we can maintain and improve the quality of our tours and our tour guides. We have a system of awarding bonuses to our guides when tour participants give them excellent evaluations. This further ensures that the guides will strive to provide the best service possible during your tour of Cuba.