Cuba’s US Holiday Visitors
In the wake of newly-restored relations between the US and Cuba after decades of tensions, the travel industry has been rather busy in finding ways to make the most of the Caribbean nation’s vast possibilities. AirBnB has become the latest to put up stakes in Cuba, with some surprising news.
The global holiday room-rental company has made the bold announcement that Cuba is now a part of their destination list. Subsequently, AirBnB’s website will now offer close to 1,000 rooms available to rent throughout the island. These rooms are part of what are known as casas particulares, or private homes, with a predominant number of them listed in Havana and the rest found in the cities of Cienfuegos, Mantanzas and Santa Clara. In a statement, AirBnB’s director of Latin American properties, Kay Kuehne stated, ‘We want to plug the existing infrastructure of casas particulares into the Internet so that they’re bookable or more visible for U.S. travelers and so that we can provide them with additional demand.” The company, based in San Francisco, has been working to make this happen since December when the new relationship was announced between the two countries by President Barack Obama. This new development does come with some complications however.
The first hitch is that all of the rooms now listed on AirBnB’s site in Cuba are able to be booked only by American users. Visitors outside of the U.S. can take a visual tour of the properties, but can only place them on a wish-list. Another stumbling block being worked on is how the owners of the casas particulares normally conduct business. Internet access is not readily available throughout Cuba, and very few of the casa hosts have that access. Some experts have also observed that the 15% booking fee that AirBnB normally gets from property owners with each room reservation might raise contention from owners who normally deal only in cash. AirBnB has taken steps to address these issues, firstly beginning to work with the hosts to gain better Internet access to communicate with potential guests that much easier. The next step is providing their property insurance guarantee to the casas particulares owners. The move by AirBnB is a major one, given that Cuba’s hotel properties are mostly government-owned and are slowly looking to expand their offerings to deal with the expected influx of new tourists from the States. The average pricing for a room is estimated at US$30 a night to start.
