Of the 50 to 60 events Carbajal’s company hosts a year, only one has involved an Asian group, which flew in for a cigar festival. Havana Reverie plans to tap the Asian market with Chinese- and Japanese-language versions of her website.
“I do think [Cuba has] missed the Asian market,” says Collin Laverty, president of Cuba Educational Travel. “It’s gotten better, but not long ago it was a challenge to book a hotel room in Cuba, something that can be off-putting to someone considering flying across the world to visit.”
Still, there’s no shortage of Cuban attractions to entice those who live thousands of miles away. There’s no longer a shortage of great places to stay, either.
Relatively new on the scene is Kempinski Hotels’ 246-room Gran Hotel Manzana in the heart of Havana—the city’s standard bearer for luxury—while construction on Spanish hotel group Iberostar’s own five-star property, Grand Packard, is underway. Golf courses and resorts in the country’s wild agricultural west have also been planned. Don’t wait until they open to plan your trip. As it stands, there’s a rising crop of trendy restaurants, such as tapas restaurant Lamparilla 361 in Havana, plus plenty of charming bed-and-breakfasts to make the 40-hour trip worth it, all on their own.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.