More than a house — a Home.

Carlos Freyre is the founder of RentalHo. A graduate of the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) in Cuba, he founded the company in 2015 from a concrete observation: casa particular owners were paying USD 5 a day —a quarter of the Cuban monthly salary— to anyone bringing them clients. With a team of UCI co-founders, each from a different Cuban province, they decided to take that model digital. The differentiator from day one was technological.

The inflection point came by chance. A guesthouse owner in Santa Clara (Hostal Casa Grillo) offered him payment just for posting his property on Airbnb — a platform that at the time was hard for owners to operate themselves because of Cuba's limited internet. Carlos posted the listing, received the first booking days later, handled the communication, everything went smoothly. And then he understood something more strategic than the commission: the long road was building his own site and fighting for ranking against international platforms with years of head start. The immediate opportunity was using Airbnb — it already had market trust and loyal guests. He moved to publishing multiple properties and running the full online operation for each owner in exchange for a per-booking commission. A scalable model.

That logic expanded across Havana, Varadero, Viñales, Trinidad and the main Cuban destinations. In 2022, taking advantage of the UAE being one of the few countries that accepts Cubans without barriers, he expanded to Dubai with a different but complementary model: full property management via owner-authorized subleasing + revenue share. Cuba operates on booking commissions, Dubai on a percentage of revenue. Today RentalHo manages 400+ casa particular rentals in Cuba and 35 apartments in top Dubai areas, with Bali expansion planned for 2026.

Carlos leads the team from the dual Cuba/Dubai operational base. Every article in the Cuba Guides section carries his authorship because every operation he documents, he lived first.