Cuenca included on a four-city marketing tour for travel and tour agencies

It will be called the Ruta Colonial, or Colonial Route, and its sponsors at Colombia’s largest tourism exposition believe it is travel package that will attract thousands of foreign visitors. Intended to showcase Colombia’s and Ecuador’s most impressive historical cities, it will include Bogotá, Cartagena, Quito, and Cuenca.

Cuenca’s cathedral from an El Centro rooftop.

“This will be a small tour emphasizing history, architecture and gastronomy and will introduce tourists to this region’s most significant cities,” says Juanita Valesco of Vitrina Turística Anato, which is sponsoring a 10-day travel expo currently underway in Bogotá. “Our objective is to limit the tour to the most impressive examples of the northern Andes. Among the criteria of choosing the cities were size, infrastructure and accessibility.”

The association — Anato for short — is organizing a series of tours for travel agency owners and managers to introduce them to the new tour, and will take groups from around the world on visits of the four cities during the expo.

Anato is Latin America’s third largest tourist convention in Latin America and is hosting 20,000 guests from more than 30 countries.

Officials from Cuenca are attending the event and will host tour agency officials on the Cuenca leg of the Colonial Route tour.