Return to Banff/Jasper

[Mark Sedenquist]

Several NSW firefighters are on the line alongside US And Canadian wildland fire fighters. Yesterday, I watched a 737 Jet tanker based in Sydney, (Australia) make repeated slury runs on the Park Fire in northern California.

Buck, sorry to hear that your trip was cancelled -- but probably pretty smart -- it is going to be a long, dry, hot summer of wildland fire in Alberta this year.

Mark

[DonnaR57]

Second, the one place I was waiting to hear back from decided to play hardball and was not going to refund anything, saying that wildfires are a "well known" hazard in that area. But they did not count on my wife. She had all the Canadian government bulletins asking people to stay away, and worked with the booking company, AirBnB, to at least get a 50% refund.

AZBuck

I have read that AirBnB gets into a lot of issues with travelers in regards to many things, refunds being a good percentage of them. Was that your whole stay or "just" a deposit?

I know they're trying to look out for the owners of the property (supposedly) and their cut in it, too.

A cousin of mine was stuck in Europe, trying to fly home, during that computer outage. She said it was a great thing that they had purchased trip insurance! They could get things that the average person couldn't get, because the airlines would take them home as soon as they could, but was not being cooperative with overnights and meals.


Donna

[AZBuck]

Donna,

What we got back was ~50% of the cost of the apartment rental which we had already paid in full. We fully understand that the renter and AirBnB need to be paid, especially for last minute cancellations, but we were trying to follow Canadian government requests that people stay away from the affected areas. In the end, it was precisely because of those requests that we got the half refund. As I said, everyone else was more understanding and refunded everything.

Your point about travel insurance is a good one. The average insurance rate is about 5%, meaning that if 1 out of 20 of your trips get cancelled for any reason you'd break even. In over 50 years of travelling, this is the first time that it would have come in handy for me, so I feel as though I've come out ahead over the long haul. The need for insurance is also somewhat diminished for a true RoadTrip as you aren't tied to one initial destination as you are on a fly/drive trip, and there are no airline tickets to worry about.

It also depends a bit on your travel style. My wife and I prefer to stay in one area for a while and then move on after a few days to a week. We also prefer home rentals rather than motels for these extended stays. In my younger days I would simply head out in my car, go as far as I wanted and find a modestly-priced motel for the night, no reservations. If something untoward happened, I would just alter my route and/or destination as needed. Now as I get older, I'm less prone to this method and the trips are getting more expensive. I think travel insurance will now be included in our future plans.

AZBuck

[DonnaR57]

I think travel insurance will now be included in our future plans.

AZBuck

At least for those fly-drives, or when you fly into an area prone to wild fires. Airlines also used to be really helpful with putting you up overnight if you had a flight delayed, getting you meal vouchers -- not so much now, if my cousin's experience trying to get home from Ireland is any indication.

We don't worry about it with our road trips, either. But we do watch exactly what is refundable and what is not. We've discovered that many motels have gone to a longer period of "free cancellation." What used to be standard, at least in the grade of motels that we would stay at, was "free cancellation by 4 pm date of arrival." Now, those are fewer. They've gone to 24-hour, or 48 hour, before arrival, "free cancellation by 4 pm on (date one or two days previous to your arrival." In a resort community, you may have free cancellation up to a week in advance, we discovered with many places in Key West as a for-instance.

Our next trip is fully booked in motels. Only one day is cancellable by 4 pm date-of-arrival. The rest are either 24 or 48 hours. All are chains -- we haven't tried the AirBnB or VRBO route, even though we are staying 5 nights in one place.


Donna

[Mark Sedenquist]

I think travel insurance will now be included in our future plans.

AZBuck

As for Megan and I, we've always purchased trip insurance for international travel--mostly so we can use whatever resources we need to work around cancelled flights. We've thus far--not purchased travel insurance for domestic trips.

Another hedge that I use when fly internationally, is to book on carriers like Delta (not withstanding their current issues after the hack) because they essentially "guarantee" that you will make all connections on other Delta flights. They refer to these connections as being "legal connections" (has nothing to do with actual legality) but if they see that a given passenger is booked with a "legal connection" they will do everything in their power to make sure the connection works. Twice on recent flights I have seen them hold flights so we could make the connection -- it's never overt and I don't run through any airports these days.

In past years, we used VRBO -- VRBO used to "power" RTA through their advertising spend (those days are long gone) and have stayed at some remarkable places. That house near Tucson springs to mind! But these days, we'd rather stay at a professionally managed hotel/inn. We can afford it and we like the extra courtesy extended by professional inn keepers.

We have a favorite chains -- mostly based on their affinity programs, where we often are comped overnight stays.

Mark