Name of your website?Hospedaje Santiago
Your name?
Mery
Your Location (city, etc)
Santiago de Cuba
Please give us a short summary of your website?
It is a very basic website created by an Italian friend who stayed with us for a month. It was his first visit to Cuba and he had the "time of his life". We are a Cuban family renting two houses, "Casa Mery y Tania" and "Hermanos Arias". Tania is my daughter and she is married to one of the Arias's brothers.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I guess it is the possibility to promote our houses in internet, many travellers in the world search where to stay in internet so we decided to "go with the time" and use this opportunity.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Around 5 years ago a Dutch guy who also stayed with us created a website for us, but only in English. Our Italian friend (we call him Pepe) created this one two years ago with more possibilities: several languages, a map, currency converter, etc.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I think this was easy, "Hospedaje" means in Spanish "Hosting", en Santiago is an obvious choise.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
I like a lot the picture on the front page of myself and my daughter, in my opinion it shows we are "real" and we are not afraid of sharing our house with tourists.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
As you already may know living in Cuba with only Cubans pesos is very difficult. What we earn renting rooms allows us to have a better income and live a bit better. We use the website mainly to secure a booking.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It is variable, sometimes we have guests for several weeks and sometimes we don't. Part of the money we earn we try to invest it back on the property: more comfortable rooms, a refrigerator in each room, better food.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
As I mentioned before we don't aim to get rich but we would like to be able to pay for our own website, and I mean to build our own ".com" with one of the hosting companies. At the same time we would like to add more houses to the website, not only in Santiago but in other provinces in Cuba.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
We hope so, my daughter works but the rest of the family is on pension and we have a lots of free time. But it will mean changing many things: how we reserve a room, how to keep all the information.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Sometimes it is difficult, specially because of the privacy, you share your house with others. The main source of irritation is people booking a room weeks in advance and not showing up at the end. We can't ask for money in advance because we don't use credit cards.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Making guests to feel that they are in their own houses, to show them a part of Cuba that is different from what they see at the beach hotels.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Creating links to it in other websites, like this one. Asking tourists to recommend our house to others.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We can't update the information there as often as we would wish. Our Italian friend updates it once in a while and, because we don't have access to internet, we are very grateful.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
It's already two years and we hope to keep it as long as possible.
How can we be helped?
Promote our website every where. We are a normal, nice Cuban family.
What is your website address?
[404 Check: was link to http:/ / www. geocities. com/ hospedajesantiago/ HS_ en. html, anchor: Hospedaje Santiago]
