We’re approaching the point where most of our planned travels for 2020 have been canceled. With companies wanting to get people to book future travel, there have been decent offers for discounts or bonuses to go along with the most lenient cancellation rules I’ve ever seen.
Up until now, I haven’t been able to think about booking any travel. I did some random searches but those were more for research and I had no intention of booking a trip. Things are changing fast so who knows what we’ll know in July that we don’t know now? I hate making last-minute plans but when something happens to change the dynamics of the current situation, that’s exactly what we will be doing.
We’ve finally reached the time when we’d be planning for 2021. We booked a voyage with Virgin Voyages on the Scarlet Lady that was supposed to be for this July. Virgin Voyages just announced that they’re postponing the launch of the cruise line until October 2020.
We’ve made the difficult decision to cancel our sailings through October 15th, 2020. We’ve been working hard to find a way to set sail by August, but that hasn’t turned out to be possible.
We appreciate how many of you were excited to sail with us, so we understand how disappointing this news is. But we trust you’ll understand our decision given the evolving global health challenge we’re all up against.
As of right now, our first sailing is planned for October 16th, 2020. We’re focused on being ready to get back on the open ocean with some exciting innovations focused on protecting the well-being of both our Sailors and our incredible Crew — which we’ll update you on soon.
We’re not looking to cruise in October but we were willing to think about one for next year. So we talked about it a bit and we decided that whatever’s going on right now, we believe that in about 14 months we will have reached a new normal. There’s our flag planted in the ground, July 2021. That is when, if asked today, we’re sure (or pretty sure) that we’ll be willing to travel again, even on a cruise ship.
Is this date subject to change? Of course it is. We still have a trip to Japan (or a southeastern U.S. road trip) on the books for this fall but that was booked long before any of this happened. The fact that we, two of the major cheerleaders for #stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands, are thinking about travel (and on a cruise ship no less) says a lot. Depending on the science and risk tolerance, everyone should be making their own decisions about when they want to travel again.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
6 comments
Nice! Join the fun.
I’m flying a lot recently, and it’s nice to be on the road, being around people, having fun again.
You might consider it a lot sooner than that. It’s delightful to be free to travel now.
With the info now available, that was the earliest we felt comfortable making plans. I hope things change and we can get out sooner.
These folks (all cruise lines) are in a disaster right now in terms of crews.
https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2020/05/articles/disease/crew-member-dies-on-virgin-voyages-lady-scarlet/
We booked Emirates First SFO to Milan with a stopover in Dubai for late March 2021. Surely things will be better by then. We had to cancel the 2020 version of this trip for obvious reasons. La Scala would not refund our 1000 euros opera tickets and only promised a credit for future use. So we have to go.
Half the fun of travel for me is the planning and I like to have a wonderful trip in the future I can look forward to. But it’s very interesting to see you book a year in advance and a cruise no less right now – are you tickets prepaid? Refundable? Changeable?
I usually have booked well in advance to secure mileage air tickets or low hotel prices.. But after spending hours of chasing air and hotel refunds and waiting for weeks, I still have lots of open requests and (potentially worthless) credits.
Beyond the financial ramifications, we are also still learning so much about coronavirus and countries are changing their immigration restrictions frequently and with little notice, making international travel extremely difficult. It’s hard to tell how things will look like in a month, never mind a year…
I’ll be in the “last minute” travel camp for a while. I’ll be booking essential flights & hotels with miles & points and plenty of flexibility and I’ll book only as far out as I have reasonable certainty that I can travel as planned. I have to travel in two weeks and booked a one-way award ticket for now. Fun travel will have to wait until there is fun to be had traveling again…
I’m not one who’s about to turn off the “what if” part of my brain so we’re staying home for a while longer.