How COVID-19 affected my Travel Plans
In November 2019, my girlfriend and I started planning our first trip together. In January 2020, we had booked our flights, Airbnb and had everything prepared, just planning what we wanted to do during our time in Seattle and Vancouver. As time went on, by end February, my mom warned me saying that if COVID-19 continue to spread, we might have to cancel our trip. I thought that this was crazy and the virus would never get to the level that it is at. But, by end-March, we cancelled our Airbnb and yesterday, I got credit on our flights. Tomorrow was supposed to be the day that we flew out to Vancouver, but instead, we are social distancing and waiting for this to end to plan our next vacation.
In terms of companies and airlines being understanding and flexible, Airbnb was by far the best. They had a generous cancellation policy where we cancelled about a month in advanced and was able to receive a full refund. We booked our flights through Expedia with Air Canada and that was a more tricky process.
When we realized that this vacation was not going to happen, it was about a month ago. Schools were just starting to shutting down, I came home from university and started social distancing and staying home. I did some research online and Air Canada said that we could cancel our flights and receive a credit that we had to use within the next year. Here was the…
