AirBnB is now available in Cuba | Hacker News Reader

AirBnB is now available in Cuba

bloomberg.com

138 pointsprofquail45 comments

Funny thing is that Cuba already has its own "airbnb" called "casa particulares", it's definitely a great way to travel! :)

you know, there are a couple of nice things about AirBnB that $COMPETITOR from Cuba can't easily match. For instance, first-world travelers are already quite willing to trust it with their credit cards. For another, it has global renown and doesn't need to advertise heavily to be found.

There is no competitor, it's an initiative from the state cuba. It's also not like it is heavily advertised. It just was basically the only option until now. I frequently use airbnb, so i know that it's great. Just saying that Cuba the state already had that kind of offering for years, as a fact.

casa particulars are more of a concept than a business entity. It pretty much means "Bed&Breakfast" (without the breakfast). The government involvement is licensing & taxation, although there's a thriving black market as well.

If anything, this will help AirBnB adoption since the concept of renting out a spare room is already widely known.

> It pretty much means "Bed&Breakfast"

No, it means something like "independent household". But functionally, yes, they are "bread & (maybe) breakfast".

Cuba is not known for the exquisite culinary culture but I remind really nice meals in the casas particulares. It comes to my mind the bread with homemade guayaba jam. And a fish we ate one night. It was so massive that they had to cook it in the oven of the local bakery. I really hope this change Cuba is experimenting now will be for the better.

Exactly. In every village there are tons of casas available, which can easily be found because there is a logo on the door. You just knock on the door and ask foor a room. I did not book any hotels during my visit in Cuba this year.

The problem I see in the short term: mobile internet for travellers in Cuba is rare / nonexistent and internet access for locals seems not ubiquitous. Probably both will change soon now that embargoes are lifted.

@rdeboo The Helms Burton Act is still in place. The embargo has not been lifted.

Also paladares, where people run restaurants out of their homes in a similar fashion. Very neat way to experience the culture!

Interestingly in Cuba it is illegal to provide free sleeping accommodations. CouchSurfing and the like are wholly illegal there so casa particulares are the only option for homestay.

There was Brian's (CEO) tweet in December reacting to White House news. It took three months and they made it happen.

https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/545597231164706816

I have mixed success with AirBnB as a traveller. I would say 80% of my requests to stay in a place are either ignored or rejected. I'm mainly talking about hosts from the UK.

In the end I just stay in Hotels, it's less hassle, often cheaper.

As for Cuba, very surprised if they have 1000 properties available. Getting internet access in Cuba is pretty much impossible.

Yeah AirBnB hasn't really taken off here in the UK as it has elsewhere. Not sure if that's a cultural thing (letting your home out to strangers) or something else. Like you said, much better to stay at a hotel or B & B if travelling to the UK

Thats interesting. I always thought bed & breakfast was a British "invention". The b&b's (in Scotland) I've stayed at have always been a pleasure, complete with toast and jam. Edit: sorry - didn't read your last paragraph about about b&b. But I would've thought b&b would be in the same market as airbnb?

But almost no actual "B&B"s are using airbnb, in my experience at least. The vast majority are spare rooms being let (or in some cases converted living rooms etc just to try and cope with london rents).

I spent about 4 months "between homes" and Airbnb got me through most of it. It's a hugely mixed experience, but in many ways I'm glad I did it.

It does seem to depend on the country. I've had great success/response so far in Western Europe (France, Belgium) but my attempts to book something in Greece were met mostly with rejections. It seemed to me that they don't bother to update their calender, rather they use the Airbnb platform in a limited way: to put out an advertisement. This makes it impossible to search for vacancies quickly, you still need to contact every single host to ask if you can stay.

On the plus side, my best Airbnb experiences were in Greece, there were some fantastic hosts (and houses).

Wow, that's surprising, I've been an AirBnB guest about 10 times and generally had a very good experience. I've had 100% response rate and only once had a problem - which was that the host had a problem with the utilities in the flat and had to cancel my booking a few days before. Annoying, but understandable and well communicated.

Perhaps it's worth looking at your photo and description to see if they can be improved, and also filtering your choices based on the host's reputation and description.

Not sure if a hosts reputation is affected by them ignoring requests.

Problem is, if I need a room I need to know quick if it's available or not.

You can see the host's response rate and typical response time on the accommodation page.

And some accommodation will have a "lightning" symbol which means you can book instantly without any waiting for communication required.

Does this mean you typically request same or next day bookings? From my experience, most AirBnB hosts are wary of doing anything last second as they typically need to plan ahead to accommodate a guest.

I had great success in Italy with very short notice bookings (a day or two ahead of time). Most of the places we stayed were set up to be full time rentals, which may make that more feasible.

Yeah, this is why I've been leaning towards regular hotels more and more. You can see dates of availability, and confirmation is instant. With Expedia, I always have that stress factor of "are they going to say yes or no?" and often times I end up placing several inquiries just to cover my bases.

I agree - though there are a lot of airbnb hosts these days who do automatic confirmation. Like hotels, if you booked it, you got it, basically.

Are you verified? Do you have good feedback?

Entire Place, Private Room, Shared Room or a mix?

Have you linked your Facebook profile, or similar? I've had great success in London using AirBnB, and know friends that have used it in plenty of rural settings.

I've had better luck with AirBnB booking way in advance. If you want something a month from now it's usually no problem, and even a week in advance is often ok. But if you want a room tomorrow, acceptance rates are very low, and hotels end up much easier.

I've had very good success with AirBnB as a traveler, both for advance-notice and short-notice bookings. We traveled around Italy for two weeks and mostly booked places a day or two in advance, with hardly any trouble.

After watching Conan's visit to Cuba, it looks like an awesome destination.

http://teamcoco.com/cuba

It's a fantastic place to visit. Until know, the embargo was an added benefit. Not just because the country was preserved as a sort of open-air 60ies museum – it was also an great place to meet Americans: because of legal restrictions, all Americans on Cuba were self-selected awesome people.

Conan almost looks like Caesar Flickerman on the streets of Havana. My wife is Cuban, I grew up in Miami. Cuba is a beautiful country with an interesting culture and a extremely corrupt oppressive government. The government of Cuba lies somewhere between Russia and North Korea for political oppression it is the type of place where expressing discontent the government in your own home can get you thrown in jail for years without judicial process. I do not have the words to describe the soul sucking disparity that exists in that country if you're not coming in with first world money.

Marco Rubio only scratched the surface of the reality in this speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI&feature=youtu.be

My brother in Law was thrown in jail for a year just for trying to leave the country. He went into jail 200lbs and exited just over 110bs.

Please understand with some intellectual honesty that people will not risk their lives [1] and face jail time in the equivalent of a Russian gulag if things are peachy dory.

[1] http://bestcubaguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/balseros...

Cuban here, I also lived in Russia several months and my wife is Russian. Cuba is well below Russia (and of course North Corea) in terms of oppression. Marco Rubio never lived in Cuba and only reflects the feelings of the previous generation of Cuban that emigrated to Miami when Castro took the power. This is understandable as Castro took many of their properties but has nothing to do with how cubans from 2015 feel. This can be easily seen when you note that he spoke against the Cuba-US relationship improvement recently introduced by Obama which is clearly something most of cuban supported.

My wife lived in Cuba from when she was born up until 2005 when her grandmother was finally able to get a family reclamation to go through. She knows many who were thrown in jail just for being associated with people who the government was "unhappy with". I would agree it's not as bad as North Korea, maybe my opinion of Russia is too high.

I never knew anybody who went to jail for speaking against the government neither directly heard such a story but I can believe that happens(journalist Yoanis Sanchez is an example). This is the way I see it, the government normally don't care much about this people or what they think/say, except when they try to do something that could affect their public image, for example if the Pope comes to visit and they want to organize a public protest. In this circunstances they are preventively sent to jail, and afterwards released when the visitor is gone. It is often the case that real criminals present themselves as "politic prisoners", that adds much noise to the whole situation and usually gets exaggerated by the media in Miami. While this is not ok, in Russia people actually get killed in similar circumstances, while the main opposition leaders in Cuba are all alive.

When you think about it, this is fascinating from a geopolitical perspective more than anything...wish this had been discussed more in the article

http://www.newsweek.com/normalizing-relations-cuba-unfinishe...

This looks like a nice Cuban Airbnb place to lounge: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5717762?s=Yoe5

The article claims that this is only open to US customers? Those of us in other countries, like say Canada, have been going to Cuba for years, and having AirBnB would be great. Was this just a mis-type?

Interesting too, lately I've seen a growth of cuban users on my job-board in order to move to the US.

Does AirBnb really only charge 3% as the article says? I thought it was closer to 10%.

It's a bit of a marketing trick. 3% from the guest, 7% from the host, or vice versa. (Not sure or course if it's exactly 3 and 7%, just the general idea)

They charge a 3% 'host service fee' plus a 6-12% 'guest service fee' plus VAT on the above sometimes. So yeah, closer to 10%.

AirBnb doesn't have to do anything to move into a new country. Just accept listings.

The article states that they were previously forced to block Cuban ip addresses and that AirBnb actively lobbied to be allowed to do business there. Also they had to find a way to forward payments to Cubans as most of the banks will not do this.

The article clearly states that they had to jump through hoops to pay hosts, since they all want cash. They did that, as well as a few other things (looks like they had to talk with the US government about it as well first).

This title seems to be missing the '(YC 2009)' indicator.

To those downvoting: a short comment explaining why you disagree would be helpful. If I've made a mistake I'd like to know so I don't repeat it. Thanks.

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