explanade
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- May 10, 2008
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- 7,461
I recently booked a villa in Greece for May next year for my extended family. I used VRBO to book as I could choose those properties offering 100% refund up to 14 days before the reservation. AirBNB properties had no refund after the day you booked it as far as I could tell. No way would I use that service for that reason alone.
Currently on a Caribbean cruise with Celebrity. They offer cancellation up to 48 hours prior to sailing for a future cruise credit. Not ideal but fine for me since we will continue to cruise. It’s also a 100% vaxxed cruise…. Another necessary factor for me. (I know it’s not a guarantee of no infections).
I recently bought annual travel insurance for the first time at the suggestion of posters on er.org, from Allianz, and it does cover interruptions because of pandemics (as well as other travel delays etc). It’s not cancel for any reason though. But if you’re careful what you book it might be enough.
Other than booking rental houses a couple of times we hadn’t traveled until October. I feel much more comfortable going further afield now because we are “boosted” and available refund policies, plus we are not getting any younger [emoji57]
As the linked WSJ article above suggests, companies should continue to offer easier travel adjustments to travelers. I don’t think I would be so keen to book without that facility.
In Airbnb, you can have a search filter for those properties which offer refunds.
I had to cancel a couple of Airbnb bookings in 2020. Got refunds in some but not in others. For those, Airbnb gave me a credit for future bookings. I don't know if they will still do that, since you can search for properties which only have refundable bookings.
For travel insurance, I would make sure that they will cover quarantine costs if you test positive in another country.
Some of the travel insurance may offer medical policies which will cover covid treatments but not necessarily quarantines where you test positive but you aren't that sick so you're confined to a hospital, quarantine facility or a hotel of some kind.