AirBnB famously entered Cuba as one of the first sharing-economy startups to do business here. But there was a catch: You could book accomodations in Cuba, but only from outside Cuba. Once inside, the service wouldn't allow you to book.

From inside Cuba, you could browse the site as normal. But a banner appeared at the top of the site saying the service was not available in your location. And there was no button for booking.

We've been using AirBnB from inside Cuba, but only by sending the links of the accomodations we wanted to our son, Kevin. And he did the booking from California.

We needed to change our plans today, and Kevin was on his way to Vietnam for vacation. But as part of the whole Obama trip, however, Cuba agreed to allow AirBnB to operate normally, and that normalcy began today (Wednesday, March 23, 2016). So on the very day when booking from within Cuba became possible, we needed to book and did so sucessfully.