{"id":3654,"date":"2010-09-30T01:13:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T08:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2010-09-30T01:13:35","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T08:13:35","slug":"cuba-cruisin-caribbean-adriana-tropicana-cruises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=3654","title":{"rendered":"New Home Port for Caribbean Cruisers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cruising’s uncharted waters are about to get charted. It’s only a matter of time until Cuba becomes the next big cruise-line destination. The parade has already begun with yesterday’s announcement that Tropicana Cruises is soon to home-port a ship in Havana.<\/p>\n

Having said that, finding out how to get on the Adriana, set to sail from the Cuban capital by the end of October, is at best a mysterious challenge. The first-language on company’s website<\/a> appears to be Russian, the physical address of the head office is in England, and yesterday’s release said Tropicana Cruises was registered in Belize.<\/p>\n

The ship, Adriana, originally belonged to a little French company, Plein Cap Croisieres<\/a>, according to one blogger, Cruising Talk<\/a>, who was in love with the ship. So it would appear that this Russian cruise line is a start-up, and by being the first to jump into Cuba’s waters it evidently hopes to get “a boat up” on the market.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brad Tolkin, Co-Chairman\/Co-CEO of World Travel Holdings<\/a>, told the Orlando Sentinel<\/a> the company has expanded its office space in Fort Lauderdale<\/a> along with its commitment to South Florida, and the reason is Cuba.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Cuba opens up,” Tolkin said, “it\u2019s going to be huge for the cruise industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is the little issue that Americans can’t travel to Cuba without special permission from the U.S. Treasury (see, it is all about the money), and those who do risk a fine of up to $50,000. Yet an estimated 100,000 Americans go to Cuba every year, and if all of them were fined there’d be enough money in the Treasury to fund health care…for a while, anyway.<\/p>\n

But back to the cruises. Tropicana will be sailing 7-night cruises out of Havana \u2014 you get there on your own \u2014 starting at 785 euros per person. That’s $1,069 US. It’s not clear where the ship’s going or what the passengers will be doing when they get to where they’re going, or when they might be going. Unless, of course, we just lost all that in the translation.<\/p>\n

It’s clear that Tropicana’s market is Europe (duh, euros was the first clue) and, obviously, Russia.<\/p>\n

For now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cruising’s uncharted waters are about to get charted. It’s only a matter of time until Cuba becomes the next big cruise-line destination. The parade has already begun with yesterday’s announcement that Tropicana Cruises is soon to home-port a ship in Havana. Having said that, finding out how to get on the Adriana, set to sail… Continue reading New Home Port for Caribbean Cruisers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,31,19,15],"tags":[51,86,35,346],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-ports","category-ships","category-stories","tag-cruise-ports","tag-cruise-ships","tag-cruises","tag-cuba","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}