Values as a banner in tourism.

Several facilities and employees from Matanzas were recognized in the traditional Meeting of Values, one of the most important activities carried out in the context of the celebrations for the founding of the National Union of Hotel and Tourism Workers (SNTHT).
On Tuesday, the Starfish Varadero Hotel, part of the Cubanacan chain, lent its premises to give life to this kind of embrace between men and women who provide services in hotels, the heart of the leisure industry, and also members of the value chain of this strategic sector, such as carriers and Caracol stores.
A particularly moving moment was when exponents of values such as hard work, honesty and altruism received their trophies from Julio Enrique Morales Verea, secretary general of the SNTHT, and Teresa Montelier, member of the provincial secretariat of the Cuban Workers’ Central in Matanzas.
The SNTHT provincial bureau awarded the Meliá Internacional Varadero Hotel, which is remembered for being the only facility in the famous resort that did not stop its operations during the hard times of the Covid-19, with the value of hard work.
In Villa Cuba, which honors its name, was placed the value of altruism, solidarity and humanism, paying tribute to a group always in the forefront or as the first to deliver the contribution of money to the homeland, a gesture extended to the gift of a layette for a pregnant woman or gifts for children of the house without family support in Cardenas.
A trio of Cuban tourism aces such as Sol Palmeras, Iberostar Selection Varadero and Royalton Hicacos were awarded for the humanism implicit in blood donations; no other hotel in Varadero surpasses them in this act of supreme love, a section where they transcend as much as for any other value that is evaluated.
Starfish Varadero was revered for its work with young people, the dissemination of patriotic values, as endorsed in its historical site, a facility that stands out in the resort and was awarded the condition of National Efficient for its excellent results in 2023.
With a leading role in the Underwater Photography and Video World Championship recently held at Playa Azul, the Marina Marlin was particularly successful for its work in favor of the community.
Since 2001, these meetings have been held to honor the position of waiters, sales clerks, gastronomic workers, reception area employees, gardeners, custodians, housekeepers, among other positions, defenders of the most authentic values of the Cuban Revolution.
«The SNTHT emerged on October the 28th, 1995, just at a time when the Cuban economy was bottoming out. Tourism was promoted as a locomotive and a union was needed to support its members and the Revolution,» recalled Julio Enrique Morales Verea, secretary general of the SNTHT.
According to Mailén Alemañy, general secretary of the SNTHT provincial bureau, «since then we have been defined by our human vocation, heir of the essence of a country that has turned solidarity into a major virtue», she confesses and the memory settles in Paradiso-Punta Arena, that hotel in Varadero where it was proposed to donate part of the tips to the hospital in the city of Cárdenas, to alleviate the deficit of medicines in the middle of the Special Period.
For Cuba, Commitment, Quality and Efficiency are concepts that preside over the 28th anniversary of the creation of the SNTHT, which will have its climax when in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba the call for the Third National Conference of this union will be announced.
Photo: Yarisleydis Torriente.
Written by Eva Luna Acosta Armiñán.