I Booked Casa Particular but Reservation was Dropped

My Casa Particular Reservation Has Not Been Honored. Why?

Sometimes it happens that you make a reservation with a particular Casa Particular (funny how these words worked out), you show up and find out that your reservation has not been honored. The room has been rented to somebody else who showed up earlier that day. It gets you kind of stranded and doesn’t speak much of professionalism of that casa owner. Why do these things happen?

Why Has My Advance Casa Particular Reservation Not Been Honored?

Because of the license fees set this high (some owners must pay as much as $300 CUC a month) which have to be paid every month regardless of number of bookings, Casa Particular owners really need to have paying guests in their rooms most of the month – preferably ever day. This type of pressure makes booking casas in advance a little bit tricky as owners sometimes decide to rent the room to a tourist who is presently there with money in hand than wait for someone who made an advance reservation and could possibly flake out.

Tourists Don’t Honor Their Part of the Deal

Booking a casa doesn’t require a tourist to put any money down or make any advance payments. This lead to a high number of cases where tourists make reservations and don’t show up, leaving owners of casas stranded. If such owner rejected another tourist who showed up at their doorstep with money, they’re gonna think twice next time around about turning someone away.

Tourists are truly to blame for occasional cases of what appears as “reservation not honored”. If tourists weren’t flaking on casa owners who desperately need to have their rooms full every day, owners would not be forced to take whoever pays the money rather than whoever makes a promise on paying when they come.

Other Tourists Stealing Your Casa Particular Reservation

Many other times it’s other tourists who simply steal your reservation for themselves. Those are the tourists who failed to make proper arrangements and want a casa in a particular location but most are already full (happens in busy season).

What some tourists do in such cases, is that they bribe their way into a casa with no respect to other tourists who made advance reservation. Cubans are very friendly and hospitable and many westerners are slimy douchebags who play victims and pull cry-baby stories making casa owners feel guilty for them not having a place to be so they force their way into a casa that was reserved by somebody else.

Alternative Casa Always Available

If you do happen to get into such situation that you make reservation for a specific casa Particular and find the reservation not honored because somebody else is in the room you were supposed to get, the owners of the casa will go out of their way to make alternative arrangements. Most of the time it will be a casa that’s of a higher value than the one you have made reservation for so you will get more for less.

Cubans are extremely hospitable and friendly. They will never leave you stranded. You will be looked after, one way or another. Even if you haven’t made any advanced booking, if a casa you walk into is full up, they will phone around until they find you a place.

What To Do To Avoid Getting Stranded

Call one day in advance. Confirm the owner that you are coming 100% so they don’t rent the room out to walk ins. It’s as simple as that.

Closing Statement

Don’t be that douchbag tourist from a few paragraphs up…