Travelocity fined over trips to Cuba

Here’s a new rule for the next advert with the Travelocity Roaming Gnome: “Don’t use Travelocity to schedule trips to Cuba.”

The popular online travel site was hit with an $183,000 fine due to users that booked nearly 1500 trips from the U.S. to Cuba. The Treasury Department levied the fine against Travelocity since the site was found to violate the terms of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

According to one expert, Cuban commerce via the Internet is a grey area that can be complicated:

“Jorge Piñon, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the issue of online Cuban commerce can get complicated when dealing with U.S. websites.

‘There's a lot of other things you can do with Cuba vis-à-vis the Internet,’ he said. ‘I could be buying Cuban cigars in Spain [but] using an Internet service provider which is owned by a U.S. corporation.’”

Sources- AHN, KVIA, Miami Herald,

Image- Travelocity Business