As of June 5, the basic freedom of millions of US citizens to easily visit a destination of their choosing no longer exists.

National polls suggest that Donald Trump’s chances of being elected president on Nov. 8 are becoming increasingly slim, but for the growing segment of the travel industry that is investing in newly opened Cuba, those slim chances present a significant threat to business interests.

Travel agents were dismayed and saddened by the spate of recent terrorist incidents in New York City, New Jersey and Minneapolis, but they remain calm in the face of what is now the new reality in our post 9/11 world.

Social media = small world. That’s the consensus among savvy agents who capitalize on the fact that as a result of the worldwide reach of social media, their clients may come from anywhere.

Susan Peavey opened her travel agency on Feb. 1, 2001. At first, business was going really strong, she says, as she worked on bringing in Jamaican workers to the States and booking their return flights for September. Then everything changed. Seven months later, on Sept. 11, the country was struck by multiple terrorist attacks.

Hotels are overwhelmed and Cuba can’t build new hotels fast enough to cope with the boom in visitors from the US and around the world. Last year 3,524,779 people visited Cuba, a 17 percent increase on the year before.

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