How to plan a trip to Cuba

When planning a trip, many doubts on how to plan it, where to start, what things should not be forgotten always come up, especially if we are talking about long trips to far away places. If you are going on a trip to this Caribbean country and the situation we describe is similar to yours, this post will help you to solve all your doubts about how to plan a trip to Cuba.

We are real experts in organizing trips and we have the best tool to do it, Passporter. A mobile app that will guide you step by step throughout your trip, while you are planning it and even once you are at your destination, so that you don’t miss anything and have all the information you need in your hand.

1. Select the dates, first step in planning a trip to Cuba

The first step to plan a trip to Cuba, or any other destination is to select the dates, for this it is interesting to know which is the best time to travel to Cuba.

Generally the best time to travel to Cuba is during the dry season, which runs from November to April. During this period, temperatures are warm and pleasant, with less humidity and a lower chance of rain. However, due to its popularity, tourist destinations can be more crowded and accommodation prices can be higher.

The wet season, from May to October, is hotter and more humid, with a greater likelihood of rain, especially in the summer months. Although there are periods of sunshine and pleasant temperatures during this time. There are also fewer tourists, which may result in lower accommodation rates and a less crowded experience.

Cuba is exposed to hurricane season, which generally runs from June to November, with most activity between August and October. If you travel during this time, you should keep an eye on weather reports and take extra precautions.

Travel Tip: To organize your trip we recommend using Passporter totally free. You can be inspired by the experiences of other travelers, choose the places that interest you most, create the travel route with a geolocated map, upload all important documents such as reservations and invite your friends so that everyone can participate in the organization of the trip.

2. Register on Passporter and log in

To use Passporter you must create an account and remember it is free. You can do it manually with your email or password and creating a username or use one of your networks to do it even easier and faster.

To create the itinerary you can do it either from the app or from the web. That is, you can register and start creating your itinerary from our web passporterapp.com without having to download the app. But if you prefer to do it directly in the app, Passporter is available at:

• App Store if your device is iOS
• Google Play, if your device is Android

3. Get your flights and accommodation

To get the best prices on flights and accommodation in Cuba, the best option is to use Aggregators and not to book directly with an airline or hotel without comparing what other options are available.

As you probably already know, the most famous Aggregators are Skyscanner and Booking. Skyscanner is a flight and travel search engine that allows you to compare prices from different airlines to find the best flight options. Booking, however, is an online accommodation booking platform that offers a wide variety of options, from hotels to apartments and villas, allowing users to search, compare prices and make bookings in different destinations around the world.

As we at Passporter know how useful price Aggregators are, from our mobile app you have direct access to Skyscanner to simplify your search. Once you search for the one you want to plan your trip, in this case Cuba, you will find a tab to search for your transportation, from Skyscanner, or to add your reservations in case you already have it. And thus you can have at hand and in a single platform all the important information.

4. Plan your Cuba trip itinerary with Passporter

Once you have your account you can create your itinerary from scratch by selecting the places you want to visit or create a copy of a community traveler’s itinerary and customize it to your liking. This way, you won’t have to start from scratch and you’ll have the inspiration of other travelers.

In short, when it comes to planning you will be able to:

• View the locations on a map and rearrange them
• Get Inspired by free itineraries from other travelers with their photos and location of the place.
• And best of all, save all the information of the sites you browse in one place.

How convenient, isn’t it? We will explain you how to do it step by step.

a. Find your destination: Cuba; Something essential for planning your trip

Once you have registered, you will be able to search for your destination: Cuba, Havana, Trinidad… There you will find hundreds of places shared by the community of travelers. In Passporter you will find categories such as:

• The best neighborhoods in each destination.

b. Assign a name to your travel itinerary

You can give it a custom name (“My trip to Cuba”) and decide if you want it to be private for you and your friends or public for the whole community. Remember that we are a community and you can follow more travelers and vice versa, so we recommend you to share your itineraries so that more people can discover those places that you liked so much on your trip and follow your recommendations.

c. Add the selected locations to your travel itinerary

The next step in planning your trip to Cuba is to add the locations to your itinerary. There are several ways to add places to your travel itinerary. One is by searching directly in our community, another way is by creating the place and adding the address so that it is placed on your route map correctly and finally by using the Passporter Chrome extension but we will explain this later. This way you will have a lot of variety and while you see amazing places in each destination and decide on the ones that inspire you the most and the ones you want to go to, save as many as you like in your planned travel itinerary. As many as you want.

When you search for, say, “Havana” you’ll find hundreds of places you’ll want to add to your itinerary. From wonderful beaches, such as “Playas del Este”, to important monuments such as the “Gran Teatro de la Habana”, to beautiful streets and areas such as “Callejón de Hámel” or “el malecón”.

5. Take advantage of Passporter to finish planning your trip to Cuba

Once you have your flights and accommodations, as well as your itinerary with all the places you want to visit organized, you can continue to take advantage of Passporter to finish planning your trip to Cuba.

a. Take advantage of the notes to organize your travel itinerary

Notes are a very useful feature of our tool, with them you can upload important files such as travel tickets, hotel reservations, organize your travel itinerary by days, save internet links and keep everything in one place (your cell phone!).

Add your bookings to your travel itinerary

No more carrying lost reservations or locators around in your email inbox or jotted down in notes on your cell phone. Passporter allows you to enter the location of your accommodation (Booking, Airbnb, Hostels) as a reference point in your itinerary, so that wherever you are, you always have your hotel in sight. In addition, you can add other important data, such as the locator of:

• Hotel
• Flight
• Rental car
• Or whatever you need

Organize your travel itinerary by days

If you like to organize your own route, with Passporter you can edit the order of the places to organize them as you need:

• According to the number of days you will be going on the trip
• The areas you decide to move around
• The specific location of your accommodation

We leave you an example of itinerary organization with Passporter by one of our users. In Passporter you can find many travelers’ itineraries to inspire you and organize your own.

Save links to web pages in your itinerary

You may have read a post by your favorite blogger and want to take all their tips with you. By adding your links to the blogs in notes, they will appear on your planned travel itinerary so you can access the article whenever you want during your trip. That is:

• Save or import links to blogs that inspire you to travel and share them with the rest of the community.

This way, you can have everything you need in your planned travel itinerary and easily access links to important blogs or websites. Finally you can save in an orderly and useful way everything you read on the internet to use on your trip!

b. Use the itinerary you have planned for your trip to Cuba 

When you arrive in Cuba, your travel itinerary will be your best companion. Use the map you’ve organized to guide you from place to place and visit all the places you’ve saved, eat at the restaurants you’ve found in the app and be able to replay those photos you’ve seen from other travelers that have stolen your heart.

c. How to add images from an article I’m reading on the internet to my travel itinerary

If you have found Passporter useful and simple so far, here is another option on how to search for places and images to add them more easily and quickly to your itinerary. From Passporter we have developed a Chrome extension with which you can perform all the above steps by adding content not only from our community, but also from the different sites you browse on the internet.

What is the Passporter Chrome extension?

The Passporter Chrome extension is similar to the Pinterest Chrome extension. With it you can save the pictures you like and inspire you the most from somewhere on the internet that you are consulting useful information for your trip such as your favorite travel blog and save those images directly to your itinerary.

To use the extension is very easy, install the Chrome extension in your browser so that it appears active in your bookmarks bar. Once you have it installed, when you browse the internet, you can do the following:

• Above the photos you will get the save button.
• When you hit save, you will be able to choose in which itinerary you want the photo with the location to be saved and you can also add relevant information about the place, such as if it is free or the price of the entrance and their respective schedules.

5. How do I share my travel itinerary with my friends

As mentioned above, the travel itinerary you have created to plan your trip to Cuba can be made public for the community or private only for you. If for the moment you want to keep it private, you can also share it with friends of your choice, so that together you can carry your planned itinerary on your mobile and everyone can participate.

Important: You will have to be registered in Passporter and if you are not you can do it in one click.

6. Share your travel experience, so that others can be inspired and plan their trip to Cuba

Once your trip is over, you can upload your experience to the app as well, sharing your own photos, videos and recommendations. So when a friend asks you what to do in the destination, you can share your experience, and not only to your friends! You will be able to share it with thousands of travelers who are already registered on Passporter and who share their content and travel recommendations, so thousands of people can be inspired by your own trip.

7. Summary of how to plan your trip to Cuba

Register or download the Passporter App and discover all its possibilities.

• Get inspired by other travelers’ experiences, photos and itineraries.
• Organize your trip by the categories that suit you best: dates, number of days or typology (beach, mountain, restaurants…).
• Add your friends so they can see and modify all the plans and information of the trip.
• Create your own itinerary of your destination with everything you feel like visiting each day.
• Add the stops that most interest you, including your accommodation, restaurants, museums…
• Book your flights, accommodations, transfers and activities through a single app.
• Save all your documents in the app to always have everything at hand: reservations, boarding passes, important documentation…
• Make any modifications you need and you’ll be all set for your trip
• Share your experience with other users. Upload photos of the places you have visited on your trip to the app and inspire other travelers with your experience. In addition, you can share your own travel tips to Cuba.
• Enjoy your trip to Cuba !

If you have doubts about how to do it, you can check our post: How to create your travel itinerary with Passporter.