Possible Trump Cuba policy announcement this week

It was announced by Reuters that President Trump will be in Miami on June 16, and is expected to unveil his new policy regarding Cuba. Waiting to hear what effect this might have on the travel industry, and whether or not we will be changing our cruise plans.

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This article came out in Cruise Industry News today:

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/17221-trump-administration-set-to-rollback-cuba-policy.html

Article starts out stating: "U.S. cruise lines calling in Havana may soon be substituting ports as U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to make an announcement regarding the country's position on its relationship with Cuba on Friday."

This is disturbing news for us booked to go to Cuba with Viking considering: 1. Viking Ocean is yet to receive necessary permission from any entity, U.S. or Cuba, to sail to Cuba and 2. Viking sailings are not even scheduled to begin until November.

My party of 5 booked a back-up cruise with Celebrity sailing the same day out of Miami in December just in case so we do not have to incur flight change penalties.

We too have picked out a back up cruise on Celebrity, but not until February. Figured if we had to miss Cuba, we would spend the extra money on a couple of days at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival. We have til July 27th to decide. Unfortunately we will lose a couple of hundred dollars due to the Viking policy, but Cuba is the big draw for us to spend the extra money with Viking, at least for a trip to the Caribbean.

You would think Viking would waive any cancel fees if they can't get to Cuba. I realize this is out of their control and contractually they have rights to cancel or substitute but they sold sailings to destinations they never had permissions to sail to in the first place so they are culpable in this.

This would be our first on Viking after sailing several other lines and we were really looking forward to experiencing their product.

It's looking like we will cancel our trip to Cuba.. decamp303 says it all .. just how we feel . Viking had no right to collect $$ on a trip that was not even approved for docking. They were not truthful or forthcoming about when we would here further and things are looking grim. This is our first experience with Viking and could be a never again one. Thanks to everyone on this board for sharing what they know.

It's looking like we will cancel our trip to Cuba.. decamp303 says it all .. just how we feel . Viking had no right to collect $$ on a trip that was not even approved for docking. They were not truthful or forthcoming about when we would here further and things are looking grim. This is our first experience with Viking and could be a never again one. Thanks to everyone on this board for sharing what they know.

While we have booked a backup, we are not cancelling Viking until our cancellation deadline, around August 1st. Holding out hope and fingers crossed they have permissions by then.