Cuban casas particulares turn home into a business

Posted on Monday, 05.07.12

Cuban casas particulares turn home into a business

Booking a room at a "casa particular," a Cuban bed and breakfast, is a
way to see the island through the eyes of the people
By Mimi Whitefield
mwhitefield@MiamiHerald.com

SANTIAGO, Cuba -- Norma Arias Puente has been learning the hospitality
business for more than a decade from a perch overlooking this city's
Parque Céspedes and the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción with
its statue of a trumpeting archangel.

That would be her apartment in a wedding cake of a building where she
operates a casa particular — Cuba's version of a bed and breakfast — and
rents out two spacious rooms.

One thing she has learned since opening for business in 1997 when the
government first allowed Cubans to rent out rooms in their homes —
although they had been doing it under the table for years before that —
is give the customers what they want.

At her bed-and-breakfast, you can get breakfast, of course. But for an
extra charge, guests can order lunch or dinner, use her kitchen to cook
their own meals or have their laundry done. She's also available to help
with lost cell phones and other dilemmas.

Casa Havana, an Old Havana homerun by retired dentist Emilio Nodarse,
even has a rooftop terrace bar complete with a full-time barman. Other
casas provide guests with cold Bucanero and Cristal beers from the
fridge or cigars — for an extra fee.

Most of the casas charge $20 to $35 a night, payable in convertible
pesos (CUCs) — the currency used by foreigners. Some provide breakfast
for free; others charge around $3.

In the 1990s, Cubans who wanted to earn some extra money would offer
clean but generally Spartan rooms.

But when the law changed in 1997, allowing casas particulares to
register as businesses, it really unleashed the entrepreneurial spirit
for people like Arias.

"When the law came out, I said, 'Wow, this is for me,''' said Arias, a
retired educator who has lived in her colonial style apartment for the
past 41 years. "I have learned this business by doing it ever since.''

In the past year, there have been other changes that allow the casas to
rent out more than two rooms, hire employees that aren't family members
to help with cooking and housekeeping, and that lower the monthly
per-room taxes from 200 pesos per room to 150 pesos. During slow
periods, proprietors also can close down for the month and aren't
responsible for taxes.

Now guests can travel from one end of the island to the other, renting
rooms from Cubans all the way. Some of the casas are featured in guide
books such as Lonely Planet; others show up on online booking services.

But for advance bookings, most still rely on the telephone or e-mail
exchanges, often relayed by third parties.

Matthew Sellar, a London-based research assistant, decided to take the
concept one step further. At his Cubacasa site (www.cubacasa.co.uk), you
can click on the desired casa and check a calendar to see which dates
are available and book the accommodation on the spot.

The Edinburgh-based website was an outgrowth of Sellar's own travels in
Cuba. "I didn't want to stay at a resort. If you really want to see what
Cuba is like, you should stay in a casa,'' he said. "But I found it was
relatively difficult to book a casa from abroad.''

Cubacasa charges a 10 percent booking fee and then guests pay the
proprietor of the casa directly when they arrive in Cuba. Sellar uses
Moneybookers, a British-based online payments company rather than
PayPal, to make sure neither the company nor any potential guests run
afoul of the U.S. embargo against Cuba or any Cuban or U.K. laws.

Since the website went live last July, it has handled more than 150
bookings and works with about 90 casas.

Sellar said it's been challenging to try to professionalize the casa
business.

Often casa owners jump on the largest booking they can get, even if it
means cancelling a previous registration. They want to ensure they'll be
able to pay their monthly tax to the government. But Sellar said such
bookings have "traditionally been very flimsy and do not materialize.''

Now, he said, casa owners know the customers he books will actually show
up and he's started to concentrate on marketing and building ties with
travel agents and guide books.

Among other booking sites are MyCasaParticular.com, which recently had
254 accommodations listed across the island, and cubaparticular.com,
which offers a "Welcome Service'' to greet visitors at the airport.

But some casas' marketing efforts are more rudimentary.

In Trinidad, a picturesque colonial city, people with signs advertising
their casas are in the parking area when the tour buses pull in about 5
p.m. But some visitors find their way to a casa simply by walking down
the street and looking for small signs with a blue symbol representing a
roof line that indicates the casa is registered with the government.

Rebecca Mohr and Jan Kuhn, a German couple, began a recent three-week
trip to Cuba on the western end of the island in Pinar del Rio and ended
it in Baracoa on the eastern tip of the island, staying at casas
particulares all the way.

"It really put you in touch with the Cuban people. It's a great
experience,'' said Mohr, a lawyer.

The casas also appeal to some travelers concerned that their tourism
spending goes into government coffers.

MyCasaParticular.com, which is run by Basel, Switzerland-based ABUC
Media Network, says it "is convinced of the social and economic
importance that each visit of a tourist to a casa particular has for a
Cuban family.''

Mohr and Kuhn liked the variety they found. The couple stayed at casas
ranging from a home dating to 1850 in Trinidad to a very modest place in
Viñales, with roosters pecking in the yard, dogs barking in the night,
and a cupboard that served as part of the bedroom divider.

"We really were living with this woman for two days,'' said Mohr. "She
was a simple country woman but she knew her casa was in Lonely Planet.

At Arias' Casa Catedral, they found more stately quarters — a spacious
air-conditioned bedroom, a sitting room with a refrigerator, a balcony
with views of the cathedral and a huge azure-tiled private bathroom with
the original porcelain tub.

"These tiles are from France — 1929, the year this house was built,''
said Arias who runs the business with her husband Manuel Rondon.

Some of the casas have unexpected treasures — period architectural
flourishes amid makeshift repairs, wooden rocking chairs on a sunny
terrace or, in the case of Casa Colonial, a second-floor bedroom where
the doors to the balcony can be flung open at night to catch the breeze
and allow the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee to waft in at dawn.

Because they are family homes, the casas all have their own
characteristics. Some offer guests more privacy and are more commercial;
but others come complete with children playfully crawling under the
dinner table and meals shared with the family.

"We are your family now'' is the way Nivia Melendez greets guests at
Casa Colonial, her Santiago home that has two rooms for rent. She lives
there with her husband Roberto, her daughter and son-in-law and two
grandchildren.

Although both her daughter and son-in-law are scientists and have
full-time jobs, everyone pitches in with running the casa — keeping
records, cleaning up after dinner or slicing fruit for breakfast.

The family has been renting rooms for about a decade. It was Melendez's
daughter Beatriz's idea. "She said, 'Let's exploit the house,'"
explained Melendez.

The rambling colonial-style dwelling has been in the family since 1919,
and it is expensive to keep up. A 1950s-era Westinghouse refrigerator
still keeps beer cold for guests, but a termite-ridden staircase leading
up to the second-floor rental had to be replaced with sturdy metal stairs.

Operating a casa particular "really helps out'' in making ends meet,
said Melendez.

She charges 30 CUCs a night. Breakfast is 4 CUCs and the family offers
dinner for 10 CUCs. (The official exchange rate is 1 CUC to $1 U.S., but
Cuban exchange houses impose a 20 percent fee on dollar exchanges.)

On a recent night the evening meal at Casa Colonial included vegetable
soup, rice, French fries, chicken fricassee; a cucumber, tomato and
cabbage salad dressed with homemade banana-peel vinegar, a fruit salad
and coffee.

Arias said running a casa can be a lot of work but it suits her. She's
had visitors from Macedonia, Japan, China, England, Scotland, and the
United States. "Really the entire world,'' she said.

"It's very interesting work; there's always something going on," she
said as she sat in a rocking chair in the apartment's front room, "and I
like to talk, to converse with the guests.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/07/v-fullstory/2788095/cuban-casas-particulares-turn.html