Cuba - What Can We Expect With New Cuba Travel Regulations?

On Wednesday, the US government announced its long-expected regulations, clarifying specific rules and restrictions affecting travel to Cuba. With the announcement of the new regulations, the State Department is taking steps to implement policy changes that “cumulatively seek to channel economic activities away from the Cuban military, intelligence and security services, while maintaining opportunities for Americans to engage in authorized travel to Cuba and support the private, small business sector in Cuba.”

These revised regulations come as no surprise, and are in fact the expected result of Trump’s June announcements pertaining to Cuba. Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures has been pro-active about preparing for the expected tightened restrictions, and a result our current and future customers are fine with regard to Cuba travel. As a company we have only booked non-government owned hotels in Havana for all travelers for the current season, and we’ve been consulting and working with a legal firm that specializes in sanctions in Cuba and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) policy to ensure that all Yellow Dog Cuba trips are fully legal and compliant with revised regulations governing travel to Cuba.

What does this mean for the trip that I ALREADY have on the books? Nothing at all. There is a grandfather clause in the new OFAC regulations stating that these regulations take effect on Thursday, November 9^th, 2017. The clause states that “consistent with the Administration’s interest in avoiding negative impacts on Americans for arranging lawful travel to Cuba, certain people-to-people travel that previously was authorized will continue to be authorized where the traveler had already completed at least one travel-related transaction (such as purchasing a flight or reserving accommodation) prior to the publication of the regulations on November 9^th.”

Moving forward, all of Yellow Dog’s group departures for the 2018 season are hosted trips, which is now one of the primary stipulations for legal group trips to Cuba. These Yellow Dog hosted trips and group departures can be found at the link below. We expect that with the announcement of the new regulations, remaining space on these trips will go quickly, so if you are interested in fishing Cuba for the coming season, contact us right away.