Online travel sites jump on the U.S.-Cuba bandwagon, report rise in demand

Online travel sites jump on the U.S.-Cuba bandwagon, report rise in demand
By Elizabeth Llorente Published March 03, 2015Fox News Latino

With the island beckoning the likes of Conan and Paris and others famous
enough not to need last names, it was only a matter of time before a
U.S. online travel booking site offered trips to Havana.

CheapAir.com now makes it possible to book flights between various U.S.
cities and Havana.

It is just one of the latest stirrings of the recently awakened
"sleeping giant" of U.S.-Cuba relations – dormant for more than half a
century – after President Barack Obama and Cuba President Raul Castro
announced in December the restoration of diplomatic relations between
the long sworn enemies.

"Since the rule change, we have seen a surge in search volumes for
travel to Cuba," CheapAir.com CEO Jeff Klee said in a statement quoted
by USA Today. "Arranging flights to Cuba is a little complicated, but
it's the kind of thing we're good at and our technology platform is
flexible enough to make it possible."

"Our team did a great job building it out in just a few weeks' time."

Earlier this year, travel search site Kayak.com showed a variety of
choices for flights and hotels to Cuba, but its users cannot book trips
through it.

Cheapflights.com, another search site, noticed a spike in interest in
Cuba immediately after Obama announced an easing of travel and trade
restrictions.

For a few days after the announcement in December, Cuba was the fourth
most searched site for Caribbean travel on Cheapflights.com, the company
said in a press release.

It became a popular search item again in mid-January, after the
administration released details about new trade and travel regulations,
which included expanding to 12 the categories of Americans who could
visit the island. It jumped to number four in the most searched
Caribbean destinations, behind Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and
Jamaica.

It has remained near the top since then, Cheapflights.com said.

"There's an ongoing and growing interest in Cuba," said Emily Fisher,
the head of North American Communications for Cheapflights.com, to Fox
News Latino. "The people who are interested in going are interested in
getting a snapshot of Cuba before it changes."

"It's like friends of mine who went to East Berlin when the wall first
came down," Fisher said, "before it became integrated with the rest of
the world, when it was untouched, unwestern culture, with no chain
restaurants. To some extent, it was Communist tourism -- we went through
a Cold War, and tourists could see what it was like behind the Cold War.
There's a lot of that feeling with Cuba right now."

But while Americans are getting an appetite for traveling to the
long-forbidden fruit that Cuba has been for a whole generation in the
United States, the U.S. tourism industry is not quite ready to
facilitate trips there, experts say.

Many trips offered still have travelers going to third countries and
taking connect fights, and fares often are expensive – in the four digits.

Indeed, CheapAir.com notes on its website that many restrictions remain
to traveling to Cuba, even with the many dramatic changes that are
taking place.

"Travel to Cuba from the U.S.A. is only legally permitted for 12
approved reasons, and (unfortunately) hitting the beach isn't one of
them," CheapAir.com says on its site.

Travelers no longer need a special license from the U.S. Treasury
Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. But their objective for
traveling to Cuba must fall within one of the categories, which include
religious, cultural, educational and humanitarian.

People who have relatives in Cuba were allowed to travel there before
the change in U.S.-Cuba policy, and many take charter flights from the
United States.

Experts on Cuba travel generally expect that it will get easier, and
less expensive, to plan trips there as demand grows and the U.S. travel
industry accommodates it.

"We've been talking to our partners," Fisher said, "airlines and travel
agencies say it's going to be an opportunity for them. It's a momentous
change."


Elizabeth Llorente can be reached at
elizabeth.llorente@foxnewslatino.com. Follow her on
https://twitter.com/Liz_Llorente

Source: Online travel sites jump on the U.S.-Cuba bandwagon, report rise
in demand | Fox News Latino -
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2015/03/03/online-travel-sites-jump-on-us-cuba-bandwagon-report-rise-in-demand/