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Yes, this is a budget travel guide, but I continue to get questions and information about hotels, rental cars, taxis, and the like, so here’s a spot for that type of information if you’re that type of traveler. Please be advised that I have no firsthand knowledge of this stuff, so please contribute if you do. Choose one of the following: Hotels and Resorts Renting a Car Restaurants Negotiating The Cuban Tourist Bureaucracy We had tried to make a reservation at the Horizontes Hotel Colina, but had not received confirmation. The desk clerks there had never heard of us, couldn’t recommend another hotel, and couldn’t have cared less. We ended up at the Cubatur office below the Habana Libre Hotel. If you are in a fix and need a solution desperately, this is the place to go. Cubaturs is the most powerful travel agency and can get rooms where others cannot (sounds crazy but it’s true). (a) Be warned that Havanatour gets a notice from your hotel, which in our case meant they were meeting us at the José Martí Airport, all too eager to spoil every try of independent travel in Cuba. It took some persuasion to convince them of our abilities to travel by ourselves. (b) For Vancouverites: make any hotel reservations at the same time as you purchase your airplane tickets. Most Canadians go on package tours, and the travel agents here were absolutely hopeless at arranging anything else for us. They sold us tickets on a charter flight, but then said they couldn’t reserve hotel rooms directly. Horizontes Hoteles has a good website promoting its hotels and the flexi fly and drive program, but I don’t think the website has anything to do with the real world. I e-mailed them and got no response. No travel agent could help me with them. I finally tracked down the company’s rep in Montreal who advised me not to pursue the flexi fly and drive program, but he faxed the Horizontes Hotel Colina in Havana to get us a reservation and never got a response. I gave up on Horizontes, but I believe their marketing program in other countries may be better than in Canada. (a) Thanks to sources: (a) john@bishop-co.com, 1/98 (b) jon.anders@geocities.com, 1/98 (c) dcalabrigo@hotmail.com, 3/98 (d) subartley@hotmail.com, 3/98 (e) belangerp@cnwl.igs.net, 3/98 (f) colarowl@chlsnr.nestrd.ch, 6/98 Return to Budget Guide |