Cuba

…Casa Particulares

In Cuba, there are only really two types of accommodation available to foreigners – Casa Particulares and Hotels (state-run). Hotels here are the same as anywhere, except that they are all very expensive and not all towns and cities have them; so for most tourists (like us), the only real accommodation option available are Casa’s.

Casa’s are simply a room in somebody’s house, and give a foreigner an opportunity to come into close contact with a normal Cuban family. In the mid-1990s, the Government granted Cubans their first real opportunity of small business, and this was it. Although heavily regulated and very heavily taxed, it allows Cubans the opportunity to make a relatively decent amount of money. The regulations include only being allowed to rent out two rooms per household, and when one is occupied, the homeowner must inform Cuban Immigration within 24 hours that a tourist is staying. Failure to adhere to either of these two basic requirements results in loss of Casa Particulare “status” and heavy fines.

Casa owners are also required to pay a significant tax each month to the Government regardless of whether or not the room/s are occupied. Depending on where your Casa is located in the country, the tax costs anywhere between 200 and 350 CUC (AUD$200 – 350) per month. Casa owners typically rent out their rooms for anywhere between 20 – 35 CUC per night.

Competition in every town and city between Casa’s is very steep. So much so, that it is not uncommon to see up to 50 Casa owners at each major bus station holding up pictures of their house as each bus arrives. Whenever you get off and collect your bags, you are immediately swamped by people asking you to stay at their house. Needless to say, getting accommodation in Cuba is very simple – even in peak season.

Havana, for example, is reputed to have between 4,000 and 5,000 Casa Particulares open for business, and Trinidad, a relatively small seaside town, is reputed to have around about 400 Casas. All Casas are easily identifiable by an upside down blue anchor symbol being displayed directly outside the door.

In an effort to get an edge on the competition, many Casa owners have started up unofficial networks right across the country. So, for example, whenever we were getting to leave Havana and go to Vinales, Mercedes, our host, phoned ahead (free phonecalls within Cuba) to another Casa in Vinales that she knew and organised our accommodation there. Likewise, when we left Vinales, Papo (our host there) called another owner in Cienfuegos and sorted our accommodation out there; and so on. The owners don’t get any kickback for this service, except the next time Papo had some tourists heading to Havana, he would call Mercedes. It’s a system that works very, very well; so much so that by the time we arrived in Trinidad – about 2.5 - 3 weeks into our trip – Rafael, the owner of the Casa we were staying at, new that I liked Bucaneer beer (book-aneer) and Emma liked a red wine that was made in Vinales province, he also knew that we were starting to get sick of black-bean rice as we’d eaten it for lunch and dinner for nearly three weeks straight.

Most Casa owners have also diversified their business slightly by offering to cook you meals (about 10 CUC), do your laundry (about 5 CUC per load…there are no Laundromats anywhere in Cuba), and they can help organise side trips for you (for a cost of course). We had absolutely no qualms with taking up offers for food, laundry, and travel advice, and consequently got a lot more out of our time in Cuba than we would have if we were staying in hotels (or hostels if they existed here).

The last note on Casa Particulares here are the number of touts in each and every town trying to get tourists to go with them to a Casa – where they charge the owner a “spotters” fee, which subsequently gets added onto the price of your room – or where they try and get tourists to go to an illegal Casa. These Casa’s operate in exactly the same way as a licit Casa, however the owner is avoiding paying tax. A major problem with this, however, is that if there is an knock on the door by the police (which apparently happens regularly if they have their suspicions), the tourist is thrown out on the street with no accommodation to go to (and this has been known to happen late at night), and the owner is severely reprimanded. Exactly what the severity of the punishment is, we’re not too sure – none of the owners could tell us.

All in all though, the idea behind Casa Particulares is a fantastic one, and was one of the highlights of our trip to Cuba.