Summer vacations thrown into chaos as hotel reservations in popular Caribbean hotspot are ruled ILLEGAL

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

Americans considering summer vacations to a popular Caribbean island won't be able to plan travel through popular Expedia Group websites amid a landmark court ruling declaring bookings to property sized during the Cuban Revolution illegal.
A Miami federal court ordered the Expedia and affiliates Hotels.com and Orbitz to pay a staggering $30 million to an American-Cuban who fled the bloody overthrow of the government by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the late 1950s.
Bookings to hotels on the small island of Cayo Coco off the northern coast of the Ciego de Avila province, 280 miles east of Havana, are no longer possible through Expedia amid the travel site's long-running legal dispute brought by Cuban refugee Mario Echevarría.
The ruling in the Southern District of Florida found that Expedia and its affiliates illegally promoted and sold bookings to hotels on land that belonged to the Echevarría family.
It's the first ruling of its kind under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which allowed US nationals to sue companies that profited from the 'trafficking' of properties sized by the Castro regime without compensation.
Enforcement of the act had been suspended until 2019 when Donald Trump triggered the Title III provision that allowed Echevarría to sue. A two-week jury trial found he had 12.5 percent ownership of the land and was entitled to $9.95 million in damages - with the jury tripling the amount to $29.85 million because Expedia continued promoting the hotels after the lawsuit was filed.
Echevarría first notified Expedia in August 2019 that the family would be seeking legal action for the group's business dealings with hotels that were located on the tourist hot spot.
It is understood Expedia has no pending reservations at the island and has no intent to resume bookings.
Mario Echevarría won a $29.8 million judgment against Expedia and two of its affiliates after a jury found that the booking sites violated the the Helms-Burton Act, which protects U.S. nationals who owned property that had been illegally confiscated by the Cuban government from. The jury determined the sites made financial gains by doing business in such properties
Echevarría's attorney Andrés Rivero said the ruling was a 'major victory' not only for his client 'but also for the broader community of Cuban-Americans whose property was wrongfully taken and has been exploited by U.S. companies in partnership with the Cuban communist dictatorship'.
'We are proud to have played a role in securing justice under a law that had never before been tested before a jury,' he said.
Judge Federico A. Moreno has scheduled additional hearings to determine the payout.
It is unknown if each travel booking company will have to pay $ 29.8 million in damages or if it will be split evenly. All three companies must appeal by July if they are not in accordance with the decision.
'We are disappointed in the jury's verdict, which we do not believe was supported by the law or evidence,' an Expedia spokesperson told The Daily Mail.
'We believe the court was correct to decline immediate entry of judgment and look forward to the court's consideration of the legal sufficiency of the evidence presented to the jury.'
A search on all three travel booking web sites showed that listings to hotels had been removed.
In a January interview with UniVista TV, Echeverría revealed his great aunt was chosen by his great grandfather to administer the land before the Castro-led revolution swept across Cuba.
The family's properties were taken away in 1961, two years after the new government's Agrarian Reform Law was enacted.
'I thought that the triumph of the Revolution would bring democracy to Cuba,' Echeverría said. 'I didn't know who Fidel Castro was.'
Echeverría fled Cuba in 1967 and settled in Spain before he moved to the United States.
He lived in New York and Connecticut before he settled down in Miami and became an important figure in the Cuban exile community.