Cuba- Travel agents

[Dharma26]

I posted a thread and lost it so apologies if this is a duplicate 😂

I'm looking at a two week trip to Cuba next year - Havana, Trinidad, Vinales, and a beach stay I think.

Can anyone recommend a travel agent? I normally DIY but quite fancy letting someone else take the reins on this one.

So far I've come across Journey Latin America and Love Cuba, I've also seen rickshaw but they seem to be pushing self drive holidays which I don't think is for me this time. Not a lot of the market goes to Cuba understandably. I've also looked at Gadventures/Intrepid but we would prefer flexibility of a private trip.

Would love to hear any suggestions! And yes, I know about the ESTA situation but that's fine by me :)

Thanks

We did it ourselves without a travel agent so can't advise. But it was all very easy/straightforward. We hired a car and drove ourselves but if you don't want to do that you can easily get taxis to drive you between places.

Did you find it easy to book experiences etc? I'm not opposed to this in theory but with limited time and a lot of places to see I don't want to risk any delays etc.

The other thing is that flights are an actual nightmare to get there (we're in Ireland) and the flights travel agents have come up with are cheaper than anything I've found myself. Looks like it'll have to be Air France (who I hate 😂) through Paris, the other option is Iberia but would need an overnight stay in Madrid which all just eats into Annual Leave.

For custom tours of lower/middle income countries I think it's often best to use an "incoming" travel agency in the country. I put "incoming travel agency Cuba" into Google (RIP my ads for the next coupld of weeks) and it found lots of results, although of course some will be near-spam and a couple of the ones I clicked on were more trade-oriented.

A UK-based agent will often not be doing a whole lot more than taking your list of desires and sending it on to their local contact, then adding 30% for their commission and 20% VAT. In return I suppose you get ATOL bonding or something.

We went to India on a custom tour with a local agency and both the price and the level of service were fantastic. We had almost-daily updates via WhatsApp while we were there with information about where our next guide would meet us, etc, and that would have just been slower if it had all had to go via London. (It was slightly "fingers crossed" as we pushed the button on the bank transfer to pay, but we had done our due diligence to make sure it was a real company!)

Juan at All About Tailor Made Travel...is on FB... did our Cuba trip in 2016 as it was a lot harder to DIY then
We stayed in Havana x 3 nights, Vinales x 2, Trinidad x 2, Cayo Santa Maria x 5 then back to Havana. All the transport inbetween.
He gave us various itineraries then hotel choices etc.

Edit we did things like horseriding in vinales, bay of pigs, a cenote, where Che was buried etc and lots of other bits all included.

My neighbours used Trailfinders for Cuba in January this year. They were very impressed with them and loved Cuba.

My parents use Audley travel for custom itineraries and find them so helpful

Do you happen to know details of what they did? I was looking at trailfinders earlier and all I could really see was group trips that I think they buy in from Gadventures etc. I may need to lift the phone but will wait til I'm a bit clearer on what we want 🙂

Thank you everyone for the responses.

It was group trips they did with a variety of people mostly from the UK, we are in Ireland. It also helped doing it Trailfinders as they were due to leave during Storm Éowyn I think and flights were cancelled but Trailfinders sorted it all for them and got them out the next day, there’s no direct flights from Dublin to Cuba.

Cuba is amazing. I travelled independently in 2006. It was very easy using buses.

I'm in Ireland too, flights to Cuba look to be a real melt, the only half decent option is Air France (who I hate but will put up with). Will check out Trailfinders !