We all recognize that these are uncertain times for travel. We are working with so many of your on rescheduling and booking future travel. Here are a few of our tips as we continue to monitor this ever changing situation.
Here are a few of our travel related tips to help you:
- Don’t Just Cancel Your Flight Due to Uncertainty – If your trip is more than two months away, then we recommend waiting on cancelling your trip. Most of the airlines are not providing waivers on refunds or date changes, unless your flight is within the next month or two. There is no need to pay an unnecessary change or cancel fees. Also, there is a good chance that your flight could be cancelled by the carrier. If that’s the case, then the terms are typically much more flexible with the airline (meaning they’ll waive fees if cancelled on their end.
- Rescheduling vs Cancelling (if possible)– We recommend rescheduling (vs cancelling) your trip when possible, but everyone is of course in a unique situation. Most airlines & suppliers are “waiving cancellation or change fees” for rescheduling (depending on when your trip is planned and this varies by airline/supplier), while some are charging fees if you decide to cancel all together.
- ***One thing to keep in mindful of is of is accepting any future travel credits for an airline or supplier that can’t be used in the future due to a company going bankrupt and no longer in business.
- Consider Cancel for Any Reason Travel Insurance – We always recommend travel insurance for our travelers. Now the additional elements that we want you to include is the Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR) option. This option adds a premium onto the the insurance costs, but it does allow you to cancel for any reason and receive up to a 75% of the non-refundable costs on your trip. Also, be sure that you have coverage to protect yourself while traveling as well (medical coverage, emergency evacuation, trip interruption, etc).
- Be Patient – We are rescheduling and rebooking travel for a significant amount of trips that were planned to take place from March thru June. It is taking more time than usual to get in contact with the airlines, hotels, tours, etc. We as a travel industry ask that you have patience and we gather the information for you on rescheduling & rebooking trips. Again, our partners often have very long queues and some won’t even allow changes unless your trip is very soon (within a month or two).
- Be Smart – We realize that some of you have planned that once in a lifetime trip or are planning to celebrate a special occasion. We can’t tell you to travel or not to travel, but we do try to provide rationale information for you to make the right decision on your own.
- Pay Attention to the Lastest Updates – Stay informed of the latest travel advisories at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories.html/ on and also stay up-to-date with the latest on COVID-19 https://www.cdc.gov/
We hope that these 6 travel tips are helpful. We are here to help whether we booked your travels, or if you booked on your own and have general questions. Be safe and we’ll all get through this together!
dshorter
