CUBA TRAVEL & MONEY: Havana

Showing posts with label Havana. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Cuba is a great place to visit to enjoy the beach, history culture, music, dancing and especially the Cuban people. One thing to remember is that Cuba is not cheap. Unless you have a purchased an "All Inclusive Cuba Vacations" then you will have to pay "a la carte" or as you go and remember Havana Cuba is expensive to the naive traveler. The Currency is the Cuban Convertible Peso CUC, which is valued higher than the USD so be careful and make sure you bring enough cash because Cuba will give you so many good reasons to spend your money and have lots of fun that the ore you bring with you the more you will enjoy your Cuban vacation. If you are an experienced traveler that likes adventure then hang on to your seat belt because Cuba has many hidden treasures just waiting for you to discover.

First and most expensive place to visit is Havana which is unlike any other modern capital city in Latin America that you have every visited. Havana is truly a city that never sleeps with its pulsating latin salsa beat and hot Cuban dancing & singing available to you everywhere you visit. Everything is waiting for you there, Dancing, singing, Art, Culture, Museums, Good Cuban food, Movies & Film, Theater, Fantastic beaches and amazing people. In fact the main reason tourist keep coming back to Cuba is the warm smiles of the Cubans who are more that happy to see you visit their beloved Cuba.
So pack up your dancing shoes and bathing suit and visit Cuba where the sun & fun never stop as long as you have the money to spend you your Cuban Holiday.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Invest in Cuba Travel and Money Investments

ECONOMY CUBA INVESTMENT VIDEO

Cuba has opened its economy to small business and these Cuban Entrepreneurs have taken the first step to a free market that is not dependent on the Cuban government. Maybe some of these entrepreneurs will start a new industry or grow to a big enterprise some day with investments.

Cuba Travel Money is changing to Private Capital Investments in Small Business.

CUBA INVESTMENTS

Monday, June 11, 2012

CUBA PLAN PGA 20 GOLF COURSES

Bay of Cuba to be PGA Golf Course Resort

CUBA TO BUILD PGA GOLF COURSES NEAR CUBAN BEACHES

Cuba Ministry of Tourism under the leadership of Former Cuban President Fidel Castro have announced plans to build 20 PGA golf courses over the next 10 years till 2025 as the Cuban island plans to offer more Golfing and themed amusement parks in addition to the sun and sand to the three million tourist who visit Havana, Varadero, Cayo Coco, Trinidad and all of Cuba every year stated Tourism Vice Minister Alexis Trujillo .

Cuba plans to build American style Golf resorts and Disney theme parks and add 250,000 All inclusive luxury hotel resorts as it tries to expand Cuban tourism and enhance its image as the Caribbeans leading resort destination said the tourism minister at news conference in Havana Cuba.

Cuban Tourism has become Cuba's main source of foreign currency since the collapse of Russia early in the 1990s which cut economic subsidies and started a long lasting deep depression. While Cuba is famous for the historical charm of Old Havana and its antique American vintage cars dating from the 1950s, most tourists go straight to Varadero beach resorts located north on the Caribbean island best beaches.

Tourism to Cuba rose 9.8% in 2012 after U.S. President Barack Obama lifted the American embargo to Cuba with travel restrictions and allowed Americans on religious and cultural exchanges to visit Cuba. Almost 300,000 Cuban-Americans and 50,000 American born citizens have vacationed to Cuba since 2011.

Canadians on Holiday to Cuba, Havana and Varadero beach are by the far the most popular tourist to the island with more than 1 million Tourist expected in 2012.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

CUBA BREAKS RECORD IN HAVANA VARADERO

Bikini Tourist Girl on Holiday on Varadero Beach 1 hour east of Havana Cuba

Cuba Breaks Tourist Record

Cuban Tourist arrivals in Havana broke the Caribbean record in the first four months of 2012 stated the Cuban Ministry of Tourism and Statistic Bureau.

Holiday vacationers to Cuba, Varadero, Matanzas, Cayo Coco, Trinidad and this Caribbean island beach paradise reached 1.24 million since April this year, up over 5.2 percent over the same period in 2011, the Cuban tourism and Insurance bureau said, adding that the previous Cuban Health, Travel & Insurance record produced a ten percent increase in revenue.

Since April, 2012, Cuba, Havana, Trinidad, Cayo Largo & Varadero beaches received 300,000 tourists, over 15,000 more tourist than in 2011. Cuba's top tourism partner is still Canada the most valuable source of Cuban tourists, followed by France, Argentina, Germany, Russia and Mexico.

The United States American tourist are the fastest growing tourist sector with over 100,000 Cuban Americans travel to Cuba in the past year with millions more Americans expected to vacation in Cuba as soon as U.S. President Obama lifts the American travel restrictions.

cuba (Photo credit: citronate)

Cuba is banking on health insurance and medical tourism to serve as a the financial engine of growth to help the future development of other social, medical and economic projects, the Cuban government aims at receiving over 3 million tourists in 2012.

Cuban Investments in Tourism up significantly

Havana Cuban tourism hotel imports and exports were up 20 percent during the first quarter of 2012, compared with the same period in 2011, due mainly to the visit of the Pope to Cuba which resulted in increased income from tourism, Cuban travel, Health Insurance and health care services reported the Ministry of Cuban Banking and Finance.

This financial profit follows a 20 percent rise in exports according to experts at the Foreign Trade Ministry. Increasing Cuba tourist is good news for Cuban President Raul Castro and his efforts to boost Cuba's debt-ridden economy by increasing export income and decreasing imports.

In 2010 Cuba's exports totaled $14.2 billion according to preliminary figures with Cuba's exports rose 10 percent compared to 2011, 15 percent of which was tourism, Cuban hotels and the remainder health and travel insurance services. The financial profits earned from tourism insurance services are accounted for by tourism and health care assistance. In Varadero tourist grew over 10 percent in April according to the Cuban National Statistics Office.

As a bonus for protecting the health care of foreign tourist in Cuba some 40,000 Cuban professionals, most from the health care sector, are working in the tourist sector in Varadero, Cayo Coco, Trinidad, Matanzas, Havana and also in oil-rich Venezuela and the bulk of earnings go to the Cuban government.

Cuba health care sector exports similar Insurance and surgery laser technical services to some 30 other countries with service category income that also includes communications and revenues from hospitals and joint ventures.

After 10 years of investing in Cuban tourism hotel sector Castro's investment funds appears to have paid off in order to boost exports and reduce imports which have resulted in annual trade surpluses averaging $2 billion since the first Cuban Investment back in 1990.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

TRAVEL & MONEY IN CUBA

Big Money in Cuba Travel

CUBA TRAVEL INVESTMENT FUNDS

Cuba is where the smart money is traveling especially now that Cuba is open to American Vacations and American businessmen. Miami Florida is only 90 miles away and the Pope is traveling to Cuba next month for discussion with Fidel Raul Castro and President Obama regarding the opening up of Cuba to American Travel.

Let take a closer look at the potential for Money and investment in Cuba resorts.

CUBA INVESTMENT
Cuba is located between many other popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean region, has great deals for the leisure industry, backed millions of Canadian, European and even American tourists to the largest of the Antilles. Cuba is abundant in pristine nature perfect for Eco tourism, old traditional fortresses, millionaire mansions and historic castles all come together in an area over 110 sq. km with over 5800 km of coastline with stunning white sand beaches many of them discovered only on Cuban shores.

These natural advantages combined with Cuba's tropical climate, fine soft white sand, clear warm waters, provide a vacation experience that is impossible for Holiday vacationers to ignore. Plus the fact that the price of a Cuba Vacation has fallen to record Cheap Cuba Hotel prices. The island of Cuba has a year round average temperature of 24.6 degrees Celsius with a soft cool breeze that blows across the excellent Cuban beaches of white sands and clear waters that act as a unique attraction for All inclusive tourist and sophisticated Investors as well.

HAVANA INVESTMENT
In Havana the magnificent Playa del Este beaches of La Habana, are located on the Blue Circuit, or Costa Azul, with over 15 kilometers of beaches and coastline, with the most popular being the place known as Santa Maria del Mar.

Another place for Cuban investment is Jibacoa which captures the attention of visitors, thanks to the unique calm waters, flanked by hills up to 100 meters parallel to the coast, with a nice sense of privacy. This investment property is under a Canadian Joint Venture with Leisure Canada to build a luxury golf resort with views of the beach on one side and hotel resort with Golf on the other.

VARADERO INVESTMENT
The next investment resort area in Cuba is the legendary millionaire Vacation hideaway, Varadero beach with the first investment hotels in Cuba by Melia Varadero Beach & Golf resorts. Varadero Cuba is considered by many sophisticated hotel investors as the best beach in Cuba to place their investment money, however all the first line beach properties are all full of 4 & 5 Star resorts. Varadero accounts for 22 of the miles of Cuban beaches full of baby blue clear waters and white sands. Definitely one of the best places in Cuba to invest in hotels and golf resorts.

Cuban beaches areas in the Isle of Youth are laced with black sand, like the striking Bibijagua Beach or brown beaches in Marea del Portillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma.

Trinidad Hotels is in the central Cuban island just south near Ancon Peninsula holds the merit of having the best of Cuban beaches of the South Coast, with steep seabed topography and abundant presence of priceless black coral which is prefect for Gold and high priced luxury Jewelry.

On the northern coast of Cuba we have the Keys or Cayo's of Villa Clara, precious beaches of Cayo Santa Maria with 13 km, wide stretches of sand and sea virtually untouched by human eyes, ready to delight the most demanding tourist and sophisticated Cuban hotel investor.

Image via Wikipedia

CUBA BEACH INVESTMENT
For some fantasy vacation lawyers and beach investors, Santa Lucia Beach in Camaguey province qualifies as paradise found as a hidden Eden and one of the best beaches of Cuba and the world, with cream-colored sands and facilities to practice all water sports, surrounded by Hundreds of bright Pink Flamingos. Santa Lucia has huge coral reefs-rated by many scuba diving investors and tourist alike as the second largest coral reef in the world-that protects the area and extends over 400 km parallel to Cayo Sabinal, Guajaba, Romano and Cruz.

American Resort Developers will marvel at the fabulous beaches of Jardines del Rey, one of the main tourist resorts in the country, 30 miles of unspoiled Cuban beaches await vacationers on Cayo Coco and Cayo Guillermo considered by many as Cuba & the worlds best Beach island resort.

In Eastern Cuba Holguín has a key position as hotel and travel money have been pouring into new resorts as tourist book hotels to the limit. Holguin Beach's Bariay point is where Christopher Columbus landing back in 1492, , accompanied by well-known Spanish conquistadors in the world of Cuban beaches extraordinaire such as Guardalavaca, Playa Esmeralda and Pesquero.

It seems the Spanish Conquistadors were in Fact the very first tourism investors of Cuba over 500 years ago. Today's money seems to need a place to achieve higher rates of return on our investment giving Cuba a natural place in our travel category for investors with a high risk investment portfolio.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

CUBA FREE'S PRISONERS

Image via Wikipedia

Cuba Pardons 3,000 Political Prisoners
The Council of State agreed to release 2,900 prisoners, among them inmates who are more than 60 years old or are ailing, women and young people who don't have long criminal records, the island's Prensa Latina news agency reported Friday.

Cuba said those convicted of serious crimes such as murder, espionage or drug trafficking would not be part of the amnesty, though it added that some people convicted of political crimes were on the release list. No details on when the releases will occur were given.

"Some people condemned for crimes against state security will be freed," read an official government communique cited by Prensa Latina. "All of them have completed an important portion of their sentence and shown good behavior."

No mention was made of Alan Gross, American government subcontractor arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in jail for crimes against the state. That case has frozen already icy relations between Washington and Havana.

Cuba this year freed the last of some 75 political prisoners arrested in a notorious 2003 sweep. While others remain jailed for politically motivated crimes, most of those were involved in acts of violence such as hijacking.

Rights group Amnesty International no longer includes any Cuban prisoners among its list of "prisoners of conscience" around the world.

In another development, President Raul Castro put on ice highly anticipated plans to ease travel restrictions on Cubans, telling lawmakers the nation would not be pressured into moving too fast and citing continued aggression from the United States as the reason for his cautious approach.

Free-market reforms

Cuba has been awash in speculation the much-hated regulations, which prevent most Cubans from leaving the island, might be lifted during Friday's session of the National Assembly. But Castro said the time still wasn't right, despite a year of free-market reforms that has seen the Communist government legalize a real estate market and increase private business ownership.

"Some have been pressuring us to take the step ... as if we were talking about something insignificant, and not the destiny of the revolution," Castro said, adding that those calling for an end to the travel restrictions "are forgetting the exceptional circumstances under which Cuba lives, encircled by the hostile policy … of the U.S. government."

Castro criticized U.S. President Barack Obama, saying he was the 11th American president since the 1959 revolution led by his brother Fidel, and appeared "not to understand" the sacrifices Cuba had made in its struggle for independence and sovereignty, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as Washington's 49-year trade and travel embargo.

"Sometimes, he [Obama] gives the impression he has not even been informed of this reality," Castro said, repeating his willingness to normalize relations with the U.S. under the right conditions.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

FREE TRAVEL FOR CUBANS

English: HAVANA.With President of the Council ...

Image via Wikipedia

Cuba — Raul Castro president of Cuba is getting rid of unpopular travel restrictions that have been in place for almost 50 years and which keep most Cubans from traveling abroad.

The Roman Catholic Church and regime-friendly musicians like Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes have joined a chorus of Cubans calling for an end to the rules, including one that penalizes permanent emigrants.

CASTRO OPENS FOR FREE TRAVEL TO CUBA
And observers say Castro is widely expected to make the announcement in an address to the National Assembly.

"Cuba normalizing its relations with Cubans who have left the country is going to have to include eliminating all restrictions. To travel abroad legally, Cubans have to obtain an expensive exit permit as well as a passport -- this in a country where the average monthly salary is about 20 dollars.

The exit permit, which is granted for 30 days, can be renewed 10 times, and can also be denied. Travelers who let their exit permits expire are declared "deserters."
The assets of these illegal travelers are promptly seized, and they are not welcome to return to home.

Among the changes anticipated in official media: the maximum allowable stay abroad will increase from 11 months to two years, but on a renewable status.That will spell a de facto end to the permanent emigrant status, and should mean that no one's assets will be confiscated any longer, and no one will be less than welcome to return to their homeland.

Cuba will be asking for its emigres to travel home on Cuban passports even if they are nationals of other countries, officials say. In recent reforms, Raul Castro, 80, has authorized the sale of personal possessions by emigres as a sort of halfway step toward ending confiscation of personal goods.

The president has said reforming travel restrictions aims, among other things, to preserve "human capital created by the Revolution." It is not just about stemming a "brain drain" -- it is also tremendous business for the only communist regime in the Americas, which is politically and economically isolated, and desperate for cash.

The incomes from medical service staff working abroad and paid to the Cuban government now tops $6 billion a year, making Cuban overseas medical staff -- not sugar exports or tourism -- Cuba's top hard-currency earning industry. Professionals, especially Cuban-trained doctors, whom the government sends overseas on foreign-currency earning and cooperation contracts, will still have to seek permission for every single trip they make.

CUBAN DOCTORS FLEE CUBA

If doctors make a little over $20 a month in Cuba, they might make a few hundred a month working in Venezuela, Uganda or Haiti; if they leave for the United States, they might make more than $10,000 a month.

Cuban doctors fled Cuba en masse at the beginning of the revolution led by now retired Cuban icon Fidel Castro, 85. Only 3,000 were left in the country, and the health care system collapsed. Now there are more than 76,000 in a country of 11.2 million.

In 2006, the United States said that any Cuban doctor in a third country could get a US entry visa for themselves and their family. In a reprisal Cuba slapped its toughest travel restrictions on its own doctors.

Back in August, the president said migration reform was in the works, promising better ties for the two million Cubans -- about one in six Cuban nationals -- who live abroad. Although they live in more than 40 countries, 80 percent live in the nearby United States.

Since 2006 Raul Castro's government has ended several unpopular restrictions. Among other things Cubans are now allowed to rent rooms in hotels geared to international tourism, sign cell phone contracts, and buy appliances -- a government energy saving measure.In September, the government authorized Cubans to buy and sell cars, and this month private homes.

Cubans are extremely keen for the government to eliminate its onerous restrictions on travel abroad. If Havana makes that move, it could be a stunning wake-up call to the United States, which as part of held-over Cold War policy, still grants any Cuban who reaches US soil legal US residency on request. The United States does not have this policy for nationals of any other country.

CUBA TRAVEL & MONEY

Wednesday, October 24, 2012