Has American travel to Cuba reached its peak? In recent years, the Cuba travel business has been booming, thanks to the Obama administration green-lighting people-to-people (P2P) trips by U.S. citizens, even as more Cuban-Americans visit their relatives on the island.

At one point, some travel agencies specializing in P2P packages, such as Insight Cuba, went as far as setting up eye-catching displays at the New York Times Travel Show to educate Americans on legalized travel to Cuba.

Yet U.S. travel bookings to Cuba may have reached their limit, given the latest summary of changes affecting Travel Service Providers (TSPs) issued by the U.S. Treasury Department between Mar. 22 and Jun. 28, 2013.

During that period, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted five additional TSPs licenses to book Cuba trips for licensed U.S. travelers, while five other TSPs lost their licenses. Some expected the number of new TSPs to be much higher.

Those companies now out of the Cuba travel game are Cuba Linda Services Corp., J.C. Mar Services Corp., JJ World Travel Corp., Marbella Travel LLC and Quo Vadis Inc.

Even that still leaves 334 licensed Cuba TSPs as well as carrier service providers ope-rating in the United States, some observers wonder whether even more TSPs will disappear down the road, and why these five lost their licenses to begin with.

“We add new providers as they apply and in some cases revoke the authorizations for reasons such as not following the proper guidelines,” said OFAC spokesman John Sullivan, in explaining the recent changes.

Despite concerns about U.S. travel bookings to Cuba in the near future, Sullivan insists that there’s nothing to worry about.

“The program remains robust and we keep adding new licensees for the people-to- people licenses,” he stressed.

At least one TSP agrees that U.S. travel to Cuba is still going strong.

“I believe about 250 people-to-people licenses have been issued but this includes the renewal licenses for groups which already had the one-year license,” said Bob Guild, VP of Marazul Charters in North Bergen, NJ. “It can certainly take several months to get a license there is only one long line for all license requests] but they are being issued.”

Guild made an interesting point about the Cuba travel business these days: the potential impact that changes in that country’s immigration law may have on future travel bookings from Cuban-Americans. “To the best of my knowledge there has been a decrease in the numbers of Cuban-Americans visiting their relatives since the end of restrictions at the Cuban end for Cubans to leave the country and the increase in the number of visas issued by the U.S. to reflect this new demand.”

Guild suggested that it’s certainly less expensive to bring a relative up from Cuba to visit the United States than it is for the whole family to go to Cuba. “But we have also been told that there has been an increase in the first six months of this year compared to last in the numbers of non-Cuban American visitors from the U.S.,” he added.

Meanwhile, for U.S. licensed travelers already made in Cuba, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana issued an advisory on its website.

The warning dated Jun. 27 advises U.S. citizens not to drive while visiting Cuba. This stems from the Castro regime’s practice of jailing foreigners, including Americans, for getting involved in car accidents that involve serious injury or death.

The advisory notes that, with car crashes becoming the leading cause of accidental death in Cuba, “drivers involved in accidents resulting in serious injury or death are subject to prison terms of up to 10 years, and Cuban authorities may prohibit drivers of rental cars who are involved in accidents from leaving the country until all claims associated with an accident are settled.”

It also said that Cuban authorities may prevent drivers of rental cars involved in a car accident from returning to their home country even if they’re hospitalized until all claims connected to that accident are settled.

In 2010, Canadian teenager Cody LeCompte crashed into another vehicle while driving his rental care in the town of Santa Lucia.

Even though no one died in the accident, LeCompte was forced to remain in Cuba while authorities sorted out the details.

LeCompte ended up stuck in Cuba for three months, including thousands of dollars in hotel costs, before diplomatic pressure from the Canadian government and the threat of a Canadian travel boycott forced local officials to release him.

According to Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, about 10% of the 108 Canadians arrested or detained in Cuba between 2005 to 2010 had been involved in car accidents.

Ya’lla Tours USA, an Oregon agency that books Cuba travel, agrees with the advisory.

“For the last six years, we’ve stopped any kind of car rental for self-driving in Cuba due to the hard conditions of driving, poor signs on the road, no illumination at night and poor road conditions,” said Ronen Paldi, the company’s CEO. “I personally experienced what it means driving from Havana to Santiago de Cuba and vouched never to do it again and not to let any of our travelers to do it, as it is simply not safe.”

Paldi told CubaNews that a close friend of his a foreigner working on the island was involved in a car accident and sentenced to five years in prison. “He was released after 20 months and deported from Cuba. This reiterated my decision not to drive in Cuba and not to let any Ya'lla travelers to do so. We did’t wait for the advisory; we took that step long time ago.”