In this episode I speak with Jason Epperson from RVMiles.com…and we’re talking about RV travel as a good alternative during the coronavirus situation.

Many travelers who might usually take flights or cruises are looking for something more low key, with social distancing options, and staying a little closer to home.

In this show Jason talks about:

• “Roadschooling” strategies for RVing with kids full time
• Why the National Parks might be very busy this year
• How the “2-2-2” rule helps keep you sane on the road
• Resources for planning
• Common RVer mistakes and how to avoid them
• Why RVing in cities is not impossible

Selected Links from the Episode

• RVMiles.com
• Our Wandering Family
• Campendium.com
• Roadtrippers
• Passport America
• TSD Logistics (diesel savings)
• National Park service passes
• Motor Carrier’s Road Atlas
• Outdoorsy.com
• RV Inspectors

Show Notes & Timestamps

• “Roadschooling” strategies for RVing with kids full time 00:00:44
• How the RV community is handling coronavirus lockdowns 00:03:17
• Is RV travel a good alternative for corona-related concerns? 00:06:29
• Protective measures campgrounds are taking 00:08:12
• How to learn about restrictions in various areas 00:11:03
• Why the National Parks might be very busy this year 00:13:47
• Extra safety precautions the RVers might take 00:14:21
• Top general tips for people new to RV travel 00:17:13
• How the “2-2-2” rule helps keep you sane 00:18:51
• Resources for planning 00:20:24
• Common RVer mistakes and how to avoid them 00:23:57
• The vital offline map that everyone needs 00:25:43
• Myths about RV travel debunked 00:26:19
• RVing in cities is not impossible 00:28:34
• Final advice 00:30:04
• The AIRBnb of the RV world 00:32:50
• Are any brands of RV better than others? 00:33:40
• Why getting an inspection is vital for buyers 00:34:45
• The next “bucket list” destination 00:35:58

Listen

Transcript

Damian: Jason, thank you for joining us today.

Jason: Happy to be here.

Damian: Could you just help the audience understand a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what you’re up to?

Jason: So, I am a full time RVer with my wife and my three kids, and we have been traveling the country for almost four years now. And, we do podcasts, and blogs and YouTube videos about traveling. We have the RVmiles podcast, which talks about our travels and the RV industry.

And we have the See America podcast, which talks about American destinations. And then we have the America’s National Parks podcast, which talks about all the different national parks in the U S, and we’ve been having a real fun time doing it.

Damian: and you mentioned traveling with kids, so you are homeschooling on the road?

Jason: Yeah, we call it road schooling, we’ve taken our life on the road and made it an educational opportunity. So a lot of our travel is influenced by homeschooling, by what we want to teach the kids at that time. So, you know, they do basics everyday math and, and reading and, writing and spelling and all that sort of stuff.

But, when we want to deal with like American history, you know, we can go to all these amazing places in this country and learn about them. We want to deal with geology. We can go into a national park and, and look at rock formations, go to a chat with a park ranger, all that sort of stuff. We did, we spent about six weeks in New Mexico our first year on the road and visited all the Native American sites and basically spent all that time being immersed in native American history, so the kids got to experience that stuff first hand instead of in a book, which was just wonderful.

Damian: I know a lot of people have had the thought of doing something like this full time, and you mentioned it a little bit, but when you made the decision, was there some anxiety around that? Was it a scary decision to make and if so, how did you deal with that?

Jason: Oh, I don’t know. We were so excited at first, part of the biggest challenge for us was the fact that I was still sort of wrapping up some work in Chicago and we had to stay in and around in Chicago and we couldn’t get on the road right away. So we were staying in a campground and I was driving two hours into Chicago every day.

So there was so much happening. There wasn’t really a whole lot of anxiety over it for me. I think maybe the kids had some anxiety. There was a lot of anxiety over selling a bunch of our stuff. And we had to downsize drastically. We had to get rid of a lot of stuff. 

Other than that though, you know, our last day in Chicago, you know, we never, people talk about the violence of Chicago all the time. We never experienced anything remotely violent or dangerous or any crime whatsoever. But the last day when we’re moving into our bus, right outside of our apartment, a guy comes up to us he actually came up to our kids first, which kind of concerned me, and he was telling our kids to go inside and he, then he came up to us and he says, you guys should go inside right now…”I was just robbed at gunpoint”. 

And that was just kind of a sign to us that, you know, it was just kind of time to leave this neighborhood. And just get out and do something else. And, gosh, we’ve been, there have been challenges, certainly like any life. But we’ve loved it,

Damian: That’s amazing timing on that story.

Jason: right?

Damian: Now you’ve been…for the audience, it’s May 13th right now…so we’ve been dealing with coronavirus for several months now. A lot of the country’s locked down. So you’ve been out on the road or in RV lifestyle during all of this. How’s that community handling coronavirus?

Jason: it’s been a real challenge for some, and some have been luckier than others. Basically, what happened…about eight weeks ago now, is that States began to close Campgrounds at least that States and the federal government ran, all the public campgrounds started to close and private campgrounds were the only thing open because this States I’ve been trying to discourage travel.

The idea being if the campgrounds are open, people will want to travel to our state and bring this virus around the country. And there are over a million full time RVers out on the road and not only full time RV owners, there are many more than 1 million people that do what we call “snowbirding”…where they go from the colder climates in the North to The South in the winter, in an RV. 

Even if they have a home or they’re just, you know, out traveling and getting caught in the middle of this. So we were in a campground, that we were scheduled to be at for a week. And, we sort of made the decision pretty quick that we weren’t going to keep moving.

We’re in Arizona where there’s probably a lower chance of a lot of cases, there’s very few people in this County, and we just booked a monthly right at this campground, and we’ve been here for the last two months now and haven’t moved.

And a lot of people have experienced that, but a lot of people were somewhere where they couldn’t book a monthly rate or they needed to get somewhere and some travel restrictions began to be put in place, and that made it difficult for people. There’s 14 day quarantines when you arrive in some States that are required, and there are some counties, it’s all been County by County…there have been some counties that have closed all campgrounds, including private parks entirely.

The state of New Mexico has told all campgrounds that they can only operate at 25% capacity. So some people had to leave for all sorts of incidents like that, and lots of campgrounds closed all their amenities, including bathrooms and laundry. and that can be a challenge for people.

I don’t know that it’s much more of a challenge then people who are having to shelter in place in their own home. But there, there are a few little wrenches that make it a little bit more difficult for an RV. But there, there’s some freedom as well. You know, if you were in a hot spot and, and wanted to get away, or if you own an RV, there are a lot of people that are medical professionals that own an RV, That are staying in their RV so they don’t have to come home to there

Damian: Hmm.

Jason: You know, they might even be staying in their driveway. Right? But they don’t have to bring the virus in their house. So, there are positives and negatives to this time that we’re in right now.

But there have been a lot of challenges for us. Full-timers, at least.

Damian: That leads us to the main topic that we wanted to talk about a little bit…so many travelers are looking at options that they can fill in for a lot of the travels that they aren’t able to take. Whether it’s airline flights, I’ve certainly read a lot about people leaning towards RV or at least thinking about it.

And we wanted to get your opinion about whether it is a good alternative, form of travel during covid-19?

Jason: Yeah. There is huge interest in RVing right now. It was already on the rise before this happened and the sales at dealerships have not slowed down at all, and the campgrounds that have reopened are reporting that they’re getting lots and lots of bookings. People are wanting to travel. They’re realizing that they’re not going to be traveling internationally anytime soon. They may not want to get on an airplane. They don’t want to deal with being close to people in a pressurized cabin, all breathing the same air. They don’t want to get on a cruise ship and they can’t get on a cruise ship anytime soon.

They might not even want to go to a hotel room, so the idea of bringing your accommodations with you is really appealing. You have your own bathroom, your own kitchen, and you can clean it yourself and all that, and you’re self contained. So a lot of people are looking at this as a great possibility.

Four, getting out there and traveling. After this is over, or even now, and people are getting the itch right now because they’ve been cooped up. They want to get out, and they want to go see some things. So, a lot of people are not working and if they have the money and can afford to, they’re thinking, well, I’m going to travel, until my place a business opens back up.

So, there’s a ton of interest right now and it is, it is a great way. So travel, there are changes happening based on the Coronavirus. And I think in every aspect of life where we’re looking at a new normal. And, when you go to a campground now, as opposed to a couple months ago, you’re going to see some different things.

I just participated in a big summit… back to camping summit, which was thousands of campgrounds all getting together to talk about reopening and all the challenges they’re facing. So they’re putting in lots of implementations, like, contact-less check in…o they’re checking people in over the phone.

Closing down their store. Maybe their stores open, but they’ll deliver stuff to you. So if you need firewood or ice and things like that, they might not have it available for you to walk up and get at any time, but you can order it. Our laundry room here has opened up, but they’ve closed every third machine to keep people distance from each other there. Give it specific hours. They have rules for how many people can be in the laundry room at a time.

There’s lots of stuff like that happening at campgrounds themselves. In general, the experience at a campground is about the same and especially as more and more reopened. But the biggest changes people are going to experience if they want to travel right now are going to be at the places you go visit.

So if you’re going to National Parks or you’re going to different attractions around the country. Those all have different ways that they’re reopening. National Parks are slowly reopening and figuring out ways to do it without visitors centers, without shuttle buses and maybe with limits for people getting in.

And, obviously events all around the country are still canceled and probably won’t be returning anytime soon. So going to restaurants can be a challenge. All that sort of stuff that you’re hearing about, across the country is happening, or people are trying to figure out how to approach reopening.

Do restaurants cut their tables in half, you know, half as many tables in the restaurant? Do movie theaters reopen? Do they remove seats and stuff like that? There’s all kinds of stuff that the whole country is figuring out and what’s happening in your local town with that is probably the same thing.

It’s happening elsewhere in the country, but it could be worse. And like I said before, it’s really different County to County. There are a lot of counties, particularly tourist counties, that have challenges that we might not understand.

So for instance, Moab, Utah is a big tourist destination. It’s a resort community town. They call it a gateway community for national parks where people go and they use the hotels and they use the campgrounds and visit the surrounding National Parks around Moab.

Moab has a hospital that has 17 beds. So, that County had shut down, all travel, all visitors had to leave. And they still have some pretty strict restrictions in place and nothing is open there. So you’ll see stuff like that happening in different places that are very, very popular. But our small communities with small medical facilities, the Florida keys being another example.

Damian: So Jason, you mentioned restrictions County by County. Is there some sort of resource that you’re referencing to figure out what’s going on?

Jason: No, it’s actually really hard to figure out specifically what’s going on, in different places other than looking at there are some websites that will tell you what’s going on state by state, but you still need to check. 

What’s going on in different areas. So what we recommend is that you look at campgrounds and accommodations and places you want to visit and give them a call and ask them what’s going on. We look at Campendium.com. It’s a big campground review website as the best place to find open campgrounds, they have done a really good job of making sure to track who’s open and who’s closed. And they have a filter in place so you can filter out the ones that are closed and all that sort of stuff for right now.

And you know, most of those will be opening in the near future, that’s a good place to get some idea of what’s going on, but it’s best to call and find out what’s going on in the local community that you’re looking at going to. We also use lots of Facebook groups, there are lots of local travel groups, so if you’re looking to go to Glacier National Park, if you go to find out Glacier National Park Facebook group. That’s a good place to get some idea of what’s happening on the ground there because you want to learn about, not only, what the restrictions are in that County and that community, okay, but how is that national park, if you want to visit a national park, how’s that national park managing the coronavirus how are they dealing with people entering and exiting parking areas? Are the trailheads open or the picnic areas open, all that sort of stuff. You can generally find out from, from people that I have done it already.

 Damian: Those sound like really good resources. we’ll certainly link to those. And a follow up question on, just contacting other people and trying to maintain some avoidance, you mentioned some great procedures that campgrounds have in place and various parks. What level of contact is really required as you’re moving around the country?

Jason: I think people often get the idea that they’re not going to have to contact people to travel in an RV. Now, certainly if you want to be in your local community and go camp near where you live. That is probably a really good way to get away from people and do some social distancing.

But if you’re doing some cross country travel, you’re definitely going to be going to gas stations. You’re going to be going to grocery stores and you’re going to be doing a lot of the same stuff you were doing at home because if you’re traveling. For a longer period than you can, take the stuff you need with you.

If you’re traveling more than a week or so, you’re just going to have to be doing that stuff and if you want to go visit sites, those sites are going to have different ways that you’re going to have to interact with people or probably just the very fact that there are going to be other people there.

I think we had this idea that this would be a good year to get to some of the busier national parks like Yellowstone, and Yosemite because maybe less people would be traveling. And we’re finding just really over the course of the last week or two from what we’re hearing is that this is going to be a very, very busy American road trip, travel season.

There are going to be a lot of people at these places. It’s not some time to have a national park all to yourself, as I think some people had hoped everybody has the same thought that you had, and they’re all getting out there.

Damian: And for those that might want to give it a try. Do you have other safety considerations or precautions you might recommend that they take

Jason: Well, you know, you can do some of the same stuff that you might consider doing at a gas station at home. If you want to wear it gloves or use hand sanitizer and wash your hands after using the pump and, make sure you’re not doing things like, wearing gloves and then holding your phone while you’re doing it, and then taking the gloves off.

And then when you’re out at the campground, you can wipe down the water that you hook up to and the electrical box with a sanitizing wipe before you use them.

A lot of people do that anyway. They’ll take a little bit, a bowl with some water and bleach in it and, they’ll dip it up and the water faucet that you hooked up to at the campground, to make sure that it’s sanitary because a lot of people, a lot of people use the same hose to hook up to the fresh water at the campground that they might use to clean out their sewer hose. So you see people doing silly things like that. So it’s a good idea to practice on sanitary things like that when you’re traveling anyway. So…

Damian: Yeah…I would hope that last one would be a common sense thing, the hose usage, dividing those a little bit.

Jason: Yeah. And then going to, when you go to the dump station to dump your waste tanks and stuff, the same thing, but wipe everything down. Make sure to wash our hands after. If your RV has an outdoor shower, a lot of them have a little outdoor shower. but that’s a good place to wash your hands. You bring some soap out there, wash your hands after doing the dirty business of dumping your tanks so you don’t have to bring anything into the RV to wash your hands. We do a lot of stuff like that, stuff that we would otherwise do.

You’re going to want to learn about the different ways grocery stores are acting or are dealing with this in different areas that you’ve traveled to. And when you go to the grocery store, that’s going to be your main point of contact, with people. But you can often bring your RV right up to the grocery store and load stuff in right there. We still do the grocery store pickup where you go, you can go to the Walmart app and order from Walmart and yeah, they have it ready for you.

They just load it up for you so you can do those sorts of things and not have to go into the store even while you’re traveling. Those are all good things to do. And then I just try to take this time, I think to go to some of the less famous areas, the less populated areas, the less popular places.

There are so many things to see in this country. So while we’re in a time where we’re trying to stay away from people. Go to some of those places. Don’t, don’t feel like you have to go to the 62 major national parks. You can go to any of the national monument sites, you can go to national forests and, and that sort of stuff.

Damian: I think that’s all great advice for those thinking about tackling something like this for an alternative this summer. Right now, I’d love to shift away from coronavirus a little bit and some general travel advice because you have extensive experience in this, certainly after four years on the road, family travel, you’re doing road schooling, so you certainly have the experience.

I’d love to provide some general RV tips and RV travel tips for the listeners. The show is about worry-free travel, all those little things that get people a little bit anxious. What are some of your essential tips for RV years and maybe specifically for those considering full time.

Jason: Well, my biggest tips for traveling in an RV, are to be flexible and to take it slow, and it’s okay if you want to plan every minute of your trip, but have backup plans, be flexible with the fact that you might not like a campground. 

Something might not be open, you know, if you want to, we call it boondocking…when you stay on public land outside of a campground, when you’re just sort of parked and running off your battery power, you might feel like that area is sketchy or it’s not easy to get your rig into. Be flexible about where you’re going to camp and then just give yourself the time to go to the places that you want to go.

We talked to so many people that have two weeks to travel. You know, they’re taking their two weeks off for the year from their company and they’re trying to book a trip to eight national parks, or you know, they’re going through seven different States and they end up spending all their time driving.

And it does take you quite a, you look at what you look at, the amount it takes you to drive on Google maps, like the suggested time of travel on Google maps, you want to add several hours to that per day for RV travel because you’re just by the very nature of it are going slower. You’re visiting the gas station more often, and it just takes more time and you want to arrive at the campground before it’s dark because nobody likes to pull into a campsite in the night and try to figure all that out.

So we use this thing called the two-two-two rule, which a lot of our viewers use, and some of them use the three, three, three rule.

And so if it’s the three, three, three rule, what it means is you, you only travel every third day and you only travel up to 300 miles and you try to get to the campground by 3:00 PM. 

And, you don’t have to follow a silly rule like that, but make a rule for yourself. How far do I want to travel in a day? How many hours, how many miles? What time do I want to get to my campground by and leave myself some flexibility in case it takes longer, so you can make sure to get there in time to set up and enjoy the campsite and experience the place. 

And then try to stay somewhere for a few days, even if it’s just a stopover on the way to somewhere, find a good stopover that has a few things to do in that community and do them instead of trying to travel 2000 miles, booking one night at a time.

It really gets difficult and it really grates on you after awhile, so that’s sort of the, the top thing I recommend to people, especially if you have kids, you know, kids are there going to want to stop to go to the bathroom or they’re going, they’re going to have a harder time dealing with the amount of travel that you’re doing.

So take it easy and, and don’t try to do everything at once, you’d be much better off spending an entire week…in one national park…than trying to go to five of them over the course of that week, and exploring the place for real. So, that’s sort of my, my top thing.

Some resources for planning your travels…we really like to use roadtrippers.com which is a great way to find destinations along a route. So you can put in your starting point. And you can put in your end point and then you can search like within 30 miles of your route to find different attractions along the way…different sites to visit along the way. Different campgrounds or hotels to stay at.

So we really like it using Roadtrippers for that. But you also can, but in your vehicles, gas mileage, and it can tell you how much your fuel costs are going to be over the course of your road trip.

And that site I talked about earlier, campendium.com,  is a great place to actually find campgrounds along your route. There’s a cool ndiscount club called Passport America, which is great for any campers that are looking for a discount overnight. So, generally going to be up to one to two nights that you can get up to a 50% discount at different campgrounds.

And basically you just go on their website and find which campgrounds in the area you’re traveling to. Have it available and you call them and, and book with your passport America card. And it only costs like 40 bucks a year to be a passport America member, and, that’s a great help, for those real short stops when you’re traveling.

And then for fuel savings, if you have a diesel, a RV, or a diesel truck, there is a diesel fuel savings card called TSD Logistics. And this is a crazy discount that is absolutely free. You basically, they pay and then they take it out of your checking account and it sounds like a scam, but it’s not.

Lots of RVs use it. It’s T S D logistics and diesel fuel…I’m not kidding…ou can save up to a dollar a gallon, it’s just a massive savings. People are saving a ridiculous amount of money, but you have to use the truck pumps right at a truck stop. You have the big ones in the back, which a lot of, if you have a diesel RV, you’re probably using those anyway.

So yeah, those are just a few different things that can help you out figuring out. Most people that are RVing are looking to see the national parks….getting that annual national parks pass is a great help. It’s $80 a year for anyone and it gets your entire carload into any, it’s not just national parks, it’s national parks, national forest, us fish and wildlife service sites, any federal recreation site. The pass gets you into, and you can get.  And, it’s a great savings as opposed to spending $30 a week for our carload at one national park. This is going to get you for the year.

If you’re a senior, you can get that pass for $80 for lifetime. And, it also provides for seniors. Half off of camping, which is a massive savings half off camping at any federal campground there, like 10,000 federal campgrounds out there, and if somebody in your family is disabled, you get basically that same benefit of the senior past absolutely free and it’s any disability at any level.

Those are super convenient and handy to have.

Damian: That’s great. That’s a lot of great tips and great resources that I’ll definitely link to in the show notes, so that’s fantastic. With the new RV years that you see out on the road, I’m sure you see a lot of mistakes. You see a lot of the same things over and over again. How can you help the listener avoid some of those mistakes?

Jason: Well, one of those big mistakes again, is arriving at the campground too late and trying to go too far, so definitely try to avoid that and trying to do too much of course. 

Some of the little mistakes that people make, often involve not really planning their route very well and ended up taking their RV places where they might not want to be taking it, and campgrounds can be very rural and getting to those rural destinations, highway miles are pretty easy, but, getting back to the backwoods, to the rural destinations can be a challenge.

So one of our best tips is to talk to the campground, go to the campgrounds website. Usually its campgrounds website will list the directions to the campground, and they’ll tell you, “Don’t take this route, take this route, don’t take that road, go around this way”. Especially when you get into like national parks there, there may be some roads that you can’t take an RV on and some roads that you can, so you want to know it’s sort of your path because you could be delayed by hours, by going the wrong way.

Damian: So a GPS might tell you one route, but then you should check with the campground if they have a specific way that’s better?

Jason: Yeah. Do not follow the GPS blindly. Absolutely, we actually, we use several resources. We use Google Earth to sort of look at the route. You know, if we’re k curious about a road, we can actually go in and look at that road using the street view, but we’ll also use a paper map.

We have the, it’s called the Motor Carriers Atlas, and basically it’s, the map that truckers use. It shows you all the truck routes in the country, so you can look to see if this is a route that you’re planning is recommended for semi-trucks, then you’re probably pretty good at it.

Now, if you’re driving a real small RV, maybe this might not matter that much to you, but the bigger rigs, it’s important to be careful about mountain passes that don’t recommend you be longer than a certain amount, and, and be careful about some of those washboard back roads.

Damian: And what are some of the common myths and misconceptions about our being that you can help dispel?

Jason: So there are lots of different types of RV, right, and people do this in lots of different ways. So one of the biggest misconceptions that RVers are very rich, and because they must be able to be rich, to be able to afford this big RV and be able to go to all these campgrounds.

And the weird thing about, especially us full timers, people either think we’re, we’re very rich or we’re very poor. Nobody thinks that we’re in the middle as most of us are. And, but my point there is that there are lots of different ways to travel.

So if you want to be somebody, that goes to all of the big resorts and you want to have the pools and the waterslides and the cabanas and all that stuff. You’re going to pay for that.

So you know the idea that our being is cheaper than traditional airplane or road trip travel to hotels… it can be a myth because people think they are going to be saving a lot of money because they’re camping.

It cannot be a myth, if you are willing to camp affordably, and that might mean that you’re not plugged in a campground that you’re going to be at, that might mean that you’re using the water in your water tank. And, You’re going to a state park that doesn’t have the cleanest bath houses and that sort of stuff.

And, if you’re okay with that, then you can save lots and lots of money doing this. Of course, the cost of your RV is going to factor into that as well, that comes with RV ownership or RV rental, there is a massive scale of RVs available for rent, and some of them are going to be way more affordable then and others.

And it’s going to depend on where you go and, that just like, you know, renting a car. So, costs one of the big myths, but you can save money if you do it right. Just like any sort of travel. 

The good news is that, you’re not traveling, you’re not going to, a super cheap hotel room and dealing with, somebody else’s cleaning and all that sort of stuff. deal with your own at that point. 

Another myth is that this life has to be completely laid back and rural and going to the boonies and going out into the woods into the middle of nowhere and not going into cities.

We RV to cities all the time. There are some cities that are better set up for our viewers than others. And you’re generally gonna pay more at a campground near a city. But they’re generally great places to camp near cities. For instance, I’ll give you New Orleans. You can go to New Orleans or three state parks surrounding New Orleans that are $25 a night.

I mean, they’re in New Orleans proper. There’s a great federal campground that’s in a Nashville proper that we stayed at that was $20 a night called Seven Points, so you can actually RV two cities very easily. 

Now that’s a challenge if you’re just in a motorhome, and you don’t have a separate car with you, right. And it’s a big motorhome, you can, if you want to, you park on a campground like this, then it can be a challenge to explore. But a lot of people rent a car when they get to a city, or they bring a car with them. You can tow a car behind your RV, or if you’re. If you’re a truck towing a trailer, then you have a truck…that’s what we do, you’ve got a truck that you can, a hop around a city and visit everything in.

So, yeah, we’ve RVed around Chicago, New Orleans, Mobile, Nashville, Atlanta, lots of different cities that you can go to. You can even RV to New York city if you want. There is a, there’s a campground, right across the river in New Jersey that is looking straight at the New York skyline, so it is possible to, to see all the different sites in America, if you’re flexible, in an RV.

Damian: Is there a final, sort of big idea piece of advice that you can give to people that are either going to try RV for the first time, or maybe they’re just getting into it? Do you have some sort of, big piece of advice you can finish with?

Jason: Yeah. To really do your research. I mean this, if you’re going to buy an RV, that is a massive purchase. Even if you’re buying an older, smaller one, you’re going to be spending a lot of money on an RV. So really take your time to do the research and learn about the different brands. Learn about the issues that people have had with them.

Buying an RV it’s not like buying an automobile. It’s much more like buying a house. You’re going to have the same problems. A house has not the same problems your new Honda civic has, you know, your Honda civic, if you have an issue with it, you take it to a dealer and it’s fixed within a day and it’s under warranty and it’s pretty easy.

And you very rarely have issues with it within those first several years of ownership. Almost every new RV has some issues with it. Just like every new house, it has some things that need to be fixed and, you know, weren’t hooked up properly, weren’t run properly.

That happens in RV. And if you look at it like that, knowing that there are going to be some challenges and knowing that if you’re somebody that is willing to do a little bit of the work to deal with some of that stuff because it can be really challenging to get your RV in for service. It can take several weeks at a dealership. There are mobile technicians out there, but that is the biggest problem that RVers have on the road is dealing with maintenance and service.

So, I just want to caution anybody that’s looking at it and to get into this lifestyle if you’re somebody that can’t manage minor maintenance and if you’re worried that your rig is going to be perfect when you buy it. 

Don’t spend thousands and thousands of dollars, and if you don’t know, dip your toes in or into an RV, and that’s a good way to find the different types of RVs that might be right for you anyway.

If you rent one, you can sort of learn about, one and see if it’s the type that’s right for you, and it might not be, you might want bigger, you might want smaller, there are a lot, lots of different options out there for RV. 

So yeah, it can be really confusing to people that, you know, might think that they want one thing, but actually end up wanting another, and a lot of people end up selling their rig for something different within the first two years and they take a huge hit and depreciation. So try to avoid that by renting, especially if you’re only going to be traveling short term there’s no reason to go buy an RV if you’re going to take two weeks of travel right now. 

You can do that and rent an RV and figure it out. And if you’re worried about driving one, you can actually rent an RV, in the local area of the campground that you’re going to, that owner will put it in the campground for you and you just stay on it.

So you can go and there’s places just like, there’s Airbnb for booking people’s apartments, you can go on a website called outdoorsy.com, and you can, there’s another one called RVshare.com, and you can rent people’s RVs there are personal RVs, but they also have they have insurance and everything that like AIRbnb has.

So it’s, it’s a great option for everybody. And a lot of those people set it up right in the campground for you that might teach you how to use everything on it. I think that’s probably a better thing than going out and buying. Normally, I recommend that people go to RV shows to learn about RVs before buying them. You know, tour all the rigs at an RV show that RV shows aren’t going to be coming back for a while. So I don’t know that I have a solution for that yet. But you can also walk around the dealer lots and all that sort of stuff.

Damian: Now on the topic of reliability and just issues with the new RV, are there brands that tend to be more reliable than others that you’d like to recommend?

Jason: You know, here’s the thing is that almost every manufacturer in the RV space is selling at every price point. . And there’s stuff at the cheaper price points that is manufactured with less quality. And people get hung up on brands. And really in the RV space, you do get what you pay for to some extent.

Now, there are some brands that are top of the line, like Airstream and Newmar, Tiffin those, but those are real luxury brands, and you’re going to pay a pretty penny for them. If you have the money to buy one of those luxury brands, great. you’re going to be happy. But if you don’t, really, one of the best things you can do, again, every one of these rigs they are built sort of like on an automobile is, but not really. it is generally a little bit more custom. They don’t put anywhere near as many units out. It’s very difficult to look at one brand to another. 

So the best thing that you can do when you buy a new RV is to get an independent inspection on it. There are lots of RV inspectors out there across the country. There’s a big association of them. these independent RV inspectors all across the country. You spend a couple hundred dollars on one, just like you’d have in home inspection when you’re buying a house from somebody and they’re going to show all the different defects because you could have an RV from a very good brand that’s going to have some problems with it, and you want to make sure that you don’t.  

RVs depreciate very quickly and a lot of new RVs like I said, they do have some problems coming off the line, and sometimes those problems have been solved by the first owner, and a lot of people will recommend buying recently used rigs for that reason.

Now a lot of use rigs are also traded in because they have so many problems with them. So there, there is a reliability issue in the industry right now…and that’s a challenge for a lot of people. But if you know that going into it, you know that you might have, your furnace might have to go in for repair or something like that.

Then you can deal with it, but inspections are really a great way to go.

Damian: And once coronavirus is done, or at least people feel like moving about again, what is your next bucket list destination? What’s the place that’s maybe something that you haven’t been to before? 

Jason: We’re trying so hard to figure that out. What we want to do you know, we have traveled extensively. Between the Southwest, the Midwest, and the Southeast. And we have done very little of the Northeast and the Northwest. And of course, those are two of the biggest coronavirus hotspots.

So we really, we, our intention for later this year was to be in New England for the late summer and early fall. And I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. You know, now we’re looking at things I recommended earlier, less popular destinations, if you want to talk about things that are on our bucket list, like where we dream of going, we do dream of going to the Pacific Northwest and visiting Olympic national park and getting all the way up to Maine and, and going to Acadia national park, and we’d love to take journey to Alaska. A lot of RVers, every summer we’ll take the journey up to Alaska and drive back and you can either drive up through Canada or you can go to Oregon and Washington and you can drive them a giant RV onto a ferry and they’ll take you right up into Alaska and then you can drive around and Alaska and Alaska is just, it looks so beautiful. We’d love to get there someday.

Damian: Those are great goals that you have, Jason, and you’ve provided a lot of great tips, great resources that we’ll definitely link to and I really appreciate it. What’s the best place that people can find you online? Where would you like to send them?

Jason: RV miles.com is our website, you can find the RV miles podcast there and the America’s national parks and see America podcast there. You can find those also on a podcast app, and then our personal travels. We’re all over social media as well…Our Wandering Family, that’s sort of our personal travel social media, separate from, from the business stuff.

Damian: That’s fantastic. Thank you very much for joining.

Jason: Thank you for having me.

In this show we try to answer the concerns of many travelers who are thinking of booking travel for after coronavirus.

“How can I book post-Coronavirus trips, but also stay safe and protect my investment?”

I am joined by Simone Collins of TravelMax, a travel management company.

Simone discuss the ways they have assisted travelers during the pandemic, tips for booking flights, which airlines are the cleanest, and some general travel tips and hacks.

Selected Links from the Episode

• TravelMax
• Simone Collins in Twitter
• Airline social distancing measures
• Hanging packing organizer
• Study about homemade mask material effectiveness

Mask material study mentioned in show

Show Notes & Timestamps

• What TravelMax clients are traveling now? 00:01:57
• How Simone’s clients have been assisted during coronavirus 00:03:19
• What Simone is recommending to travelers trying to book 00:09:39
• What protective measures are airlines taking? 00:10:36
• Recommended personal precautions 00:14:24
• Why booking with 3rd party aggregators can cause problems 00:20:06
• General travel tips 00:25:44
• Unexpected travel hack…capes 00:26:14
• The packing gadget Simone swears by 00:27:11
• Common mistakes travelers make 00:28:42

Listen

Transcript

Damian: Thank you very much for joining us today.

Simone: Oh, it’s a pleasure. I’m so excited.

Damian: Would you mind, for those that aren’t aware of what you do, can you just share kind of a 30-second overview of what you do and what TraveMax does?

Simone: Sure. Yeah. I am the CEO along with my husband, Malcolm Collins of TraveMax, which is a travel management company specializing in corporate, entertainment, sports and production travel….and then in a sort of off-shoot branch, we’re also a wholesaler. So boutique travel agencies purchased their inventory through us in many cases to get access to our better negotiating power, which ultimately enables us to offer better terms to our direct clients. And really, we sell to everyone. I mean, many of our corporate clients have us do their leisure trips too. So that’s, that’s where our minds are.

Damian: And how did this start for you? How did you get started in this line of business?

Simone: Oh my goodness. By complete mistake. My husband Malcolm is a former neuroscientist turned entrepreneur and venture capitalist. I started out in the startup world and , both of us ended up doing what’s called a search fund. Like miniature private equity. We raised money from investors to find one gem of a company that we thought would be a really great investment to grow over time with our investors money, and then once we found that company, we raised more money from our investors to acquire it and then operate it. And here we are, we did not expect to find and acquire a travel business. In fact, I would say in our investment world, something like travel is usually seen as outside the focus. They love things like regulatory compliance software and you know, very stable, recurring revenue businesses.

But TraveMax was just such a compelling company. We loved the hybrid wholesaler and corporate travel management angle, and we were just enchanted by the team, it’s an amazing business.

Damian: It’s a funny “fall into it” kind of story.

Simone: It was quite the misadventure, but that, that’s kind of how we roll.

Damian: And during this right now, you mentioned in some of our emails back and forth that you do have plenty of clients that are traveling now. Can you kind of explain who is traveling during coronavirus right now?

Simone: Yeah, I mean, so essential workers, as we’ve all heard on the news, like medical professionals are often traveling, to help in areas where there’s great need. Also, we do a lot of travel for other types of essential workers considered that engineers need to fix…factory parts in various parts of the world. They can’t do that remotely from their machines. Though, of course, you can try to do it from your computer to help someone troubleshoot. So we are flying around the odd engineer to go fix things, specialists to do stuff that physically you have to do in person. And we’re just making sure that they travel safely.

There is the odd person who’s traveling in terms of discretionary travel. Usually it’s because there’s a family emergency. They need to take care of a loved one. They need to, I guess, you know, move out, for various reasons. It’s, there’s still a decent amount of travel taking place, which impresses us though. I mean, as far as we’re concerned, there’s no travel happening, relatively speaking. It’s nothing.

Damian: But even in that last case, it’s almost like that is essential travel for that person. Not in a way that you might expect or to find it normally.

Simone: No. Yes,

Damian: You know, of a family situation, something like that. They have no way around it.

Simone: Exactly.

Damian: And how have you helped your clients during this? Have you had, I assume there’s been a lot of requests for assistance re-arranging things, changing plans, how have you been helping them?

Simone: Oh my goodness. There was such a flurry of activity as all the cancellations came in, our team had a lot of work to do and sat on hold with airlines, struggling to get refunds in any sort, in many cases for hundreds of hours, collectively, maybe thousands at this point.

The majority of our customers didn’t have travel insurance, so those who didn’t, and most of the travel insurance policies that we didn’t have, those got really quickly resolved. For the rest of our customers we were fighting tooth and nail just to get special exceptions from airlines, which we have contracts with.

Nearly every major airline, meaning that we have a rep that we can call and say, you know, “Hey, can you help us out with this case?”. So we have banks of waivers and favors that we can apply. So, we really dug deep into those to help all of our passengers get home safely wherever they needed to be. Now, when people are starting to travel again or asking us questions, we have a sort of a systematic process that we try to walk them through to make sure not only that financially there’ll be safe with this process, but also personally health wise, because there are so many factors to consider.

It’s not just about, “Oh, I’m worried about getting sick personally”. Who are you going to go see? Are they at risk? Do you live with at risk people? You know, who is going to potentially be put at risk by this trip? And what can we do about this trip to protect you as much as possible?

Damian: And for those clients that are still abroad, maybe they’re away from their home…how are they dealing with their current situation? Are they, in general, quarantined? What’s their status right now?

Simone: Everyone who wanted to get home, we’ve gotten them home. We have access to humanitarian flights and a lot of insider tips like last minute flights that are coming out. We’re, we’re really accustomed to helping people with natural disasters, like hurricanes where you only have maybe a couple of hours to get someone out of an area. So we’re really familiar with sneaking people out, whether it’s political instability or a severe weather event, and they need to get out of a place. So we didn’t, we don’t really have anyone who, against their will, is opting to stay somewhere.

We do have people who’ve chosen to stay in places when, at the end of February when the news started getting increasingly serious, my father and his girlfriend were staying with my husband and infant in Peru where we have an apartment, cause that’s where TravelMax is…wholesale offices are. So we were there doing work and we were already scheduled to fly back for the month of March. But, my dad and his girlfriend decided to extend their stay in our apartment, and just ride out the pandemic in Peru because his home was in the Bay area, the San Francisco Bay area, where at the time that seemed to be the worst area of outbreak, you know, people were, as far as seeing it as like the landing place of Corona virus and all Asia based travelers were coming in through SFO and Oakland and San Jose airports. And then that was before people realized that a lot more people in New York were getting sick from travelers from Europe. So he just decided to stay in and ride it out. 

It has been so fascinating to experience the Peruvian lockdown through employees and also through my dad. The Peruvian government is taking this so much more seriously than the United States government. There was even a period where it was so strict that only one gender could leave the house each day. And only that could be for essential purposes.

And keep in mind that in Italy, I mean, maybe you’d get fined if you didn’t have a good reason for being outside, but you could go outside if he wants it to. And they were really severely hit, and Peru, you know, there isn’t news about a really bad outbreak. It doesn’t appear to be that out of control. They’re just taking it seriously. So we admire the government’s response and it’s fun to see how different governments are responding.

But there are huge implications to this, you know, for who’s locked down. International travel this really affects how people are going to be able to move around from country to country. As the travel bans lift as certain countries, provinces, States, cities start to reopen, there have been times where certain States have mandated 14 day quarantine. Certain countries mandate 14 day quarantines or more. And when we have people getting out on the road, we need to warn them, you know, “Hey, you gotta watch out for places A, B, C, D, and E. Cause if you go to them. You’re going to have to stay locked down for 14 days”. 

Although, you know, just recently, I don’t know if you know this, but in Austria, you can not opt to pay around $250 to get a test that within an hour will allow you to circumvent their 14 day quarantine if you have antibodies or not. If you have antibiotics, if you don’t have the virus. 

So it’s, it’s very complex in terms of where people are, how people might be stranded in the future, and where people have chosen to ride out the pandemic.

Damian: And I think you had mentioned that some people, you would say they’re not really worried….they’re not really that concerned about the situation. Are you aware of what their standpoint is on it? What’s their thinking as far as not being as concerned as many other people?

Simone: Yeah. We hear a lot of different approaches. The two most common are, “Oh, I think I already had it”, which they may very well have.

Then the other is, “Oh, you know, everyone’s going to get sick anyway. This thing spreads so much. It’s only a matter of time, you know, if I’m going to get it, if I’m gonna get it, if I’m going to die, I’m going to die. I’ve got my sanitary wipes. I’ve got, you know, hand sanitizer, like, let’s just do this”. You know, they’re very resolved to just get through it.

Damian: Are you getting inquiries for future travel now other than those who would deem themselves necessarily to be traveling?

Simone: Absolutely. People are starting to book their holiday travel. They’re starting to book travel for 2021 absolutely, and we do have some people who are seeing good travel deals. For even like the month of November. So they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to book my Thanksgiving travel”. We’d warn people when they’re doing that because a lot of people are under the impression that all airlines are offering zero change fees and everything’s super permissive, that’s not necessarily the case for travel that’s being booked certain months in advance. 

So we just want to make sure everyone’s really careful when they start making those bookings. But it’s, “now is a great time to book”. Airlines are desperate to fill seats and also increase their cash flow, whatever it takes.

Damian: I think we’re seeing a lot of that now. That was kind of the main topic we were going to talk about, is helping those thinking about that. Everyone’s seeing the deals. Everyone’s looking into the future now that we know a bit more about the virus, we can kind of see the path working it’s way through. So it’s at least back on people’s radar that they might be able to travel again, or, you know, within the year perhaps. So they’re looking at these things. So, as a company, what are you advising to people that are starting to look at travel?

Simone: We are advising them to very carefully select their airlines. There’s a huge difference in, in different airlines approaches to social distancing and safety and also refunds to a certain extent. Though, I mean, at least with the U S government providing PPP loans, I think we’re seeing a little bit more control over what is and is not a refund.

So I mean, like really great airlines with blocked out middle seats, and unlimited seat selection and really good boarding policies. Delta, Southwest, Alaska…we’re trying to push people toward those few.

Damian: I was going to ask what, who’s standing out as far as things like that? Those that are blocking middle seats?

Simone: Yes. So Delta, Southwest and Alaska are blocking middle seats. Frontier, which is not one of our sort of recommended airlines at this time, has taken a very interesting approach recently, which may get them some backlash and that they’re charging, I think, $36 for you to pay to block out the seat next to you. And that’s kind of like, I know and appreciate their attempts to make money. I understand. 

Damian: That sounds like airlines being airlines…

Simone: Yeah. Right? And they need to, frankly, they’re in a very dire situation…but really like the worst players I would say are Allegiant and Sun Country…they have almost no protective measures right now.

Middle of the road players… United and American are doing a pretty good job. They’re doing most of the measures to protect passengers.

Damian: In addition to blocking that middle seat, what are the other measures that, you say some are doing really good, some are doing nothing as somewhere in between. So other than middle seat blocking,what would be on that list?

Simone: Most are now requiring masks for passengers and crew, the Frontier, Jet Blue, and Spirit aren’t yet making masks available, which is important for passengers.

Some are cleaning before every flight. Some are not. And they’re only cleaning the flights overnight, which to me is a big deal. So Delta and Southwest clean before every flight as well as American and Hawaiian airlines, and I think that’s really important.

And then, you know, in other cases, back to front boarding is another thing that airlines are doing that currently is being practiced by Delta, American, Frontier and Hawaiian. They board this way to try to reduce the amount of humans passing by other humans, which is really key during this time.

Keep in mind this is changing on a day to day basis. Airlines are testing different things out, trying to figure out how to balance revenue maximization and their balance sheets, which are not looking so great right now…and passenger safety to try to win people over too and get them comfortable traveling. So what I’m saying now could change in a couple of days, but I would say that Delta’s approach and American’s approach has been very consistent. 

United has been a little, they’ve tried to play it a little aggressively on the refunds front for a little bit. So to me, I think their corporate strategy might be a little bit less passenger-friendly than I would typically like. But still, they’re doing a lot of the safety measures that we’re looking for, and I think they are ultimately fighting for passenger’s best interests.

Damian: When you say United playing a little aggressive on the refund standpoint, what do you mean by that?

Simone: Early on in the process, they had a very creative definition of a flight change. So consider that, I think for Southwest, which of course, you know, has the most generous policies with regard to changes on all fronts…I think, you know, refunds will be, will be offered if a flight schedule changes at all. I may not have that 100% correct, but I think that that is correct. 

Whereas  with most other airlines, they’ll give you a refund if the schedule changes maybe more than an hour or two hours. With, with United for a while, they were getting really fast and loose with their definition of a. Like a schedule change where they would give a refund for that flight. Which for our entertainment and production clients and some of our engineering plants does not fly, uou know, you need to go in and out of the city in one day. If your flight’s delayed by six hours, that’s not going to work. And that’s when your return flight was going to go, so that, that’s something that we found to be problematic.

I think the department of transportation pushed back on that policy, so I think they’ve changed it, but it’s just something to really watch out for in the fine print or better yet, consult with an agent who can really easily check that stuff because, in some cases it’s really difficult to see what the change in cancellation policies are.

Damian: As far as, you know, individuals and personal precautions, what would you advise for people to do as far as that.

Simone: There are so many things you can do. Everyone’s talking about masks right now. , the general understanding of course, is that masks are to prevent you from getting other people sick. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make an improvised cloth mask that actually is effective at filtering out particular very fine particulate matter.

Even one of my former colleagues and a good friend of ours named Eugenia O’Kelly recently, with a bunch of her fellow researchers at the University of Cambridge, did a study on what improvised home fabrics do a good job because trying to make their own masks now, and ultimately she found, and I can send this, this article to you if you want to include it in the show notes, it’s currently in pre-print, but they found that disposable vacuum bags, the HEPA filters are at least in their study I think it came out as a more effective material at filtering ultra fine particulate matter then an N-95 mask, you and we’ll have vacuums sitting around. And there’s stuff in everyday houses that could really make effective masks. So when we are advising clients who don’t necessarily have an N-95 mask that they can use or really effective, proper professional masks like this the kind of mask you might use in construction when sanding down a wall, which also has an N-95 filter in it, we encourage them to make improvise masks with better fabrics, you know, at least a doubled up shirts, if not denim, which can be more effective, or vacuum parts.

We also really encourage people when possible to rent cars and not take an Uber or a Lyft. It, to me, it’s such a moot point to agonize over whether your airline blocks out center seats and has back to front loading first, and then you get to go to the airport and return from the airport and maybe go all around the city, you are getting in a very enclosed space with a driver who…every day, like as part of their work needs to get in a very enclosed space with people who are more mobile. Right now we’re coming back from airports and you know, if anyone’s going to be exposed, it’s them. It’s really easy for you to cough or sneeze particles to filter around a car very quickly. 

So we’re trying to encourage everyone to rent cars whenever possible, if they need to, and avoid as much contact with crowds in general, which also means to try to get, which is a little bit more difficult now, direct flights instead of connecting flights…some airlines had be sort of creative in their requirements for the Payroll Protection Plan to continue serving certain routes…have taken this sort of puddle jumping approach to getting people from point A to B, where they’ll stop at various airports to pick people up, allowing them to say that they’re still maintaining those routes.

I’d say that’s still better than a flight where you actually have to change planes, but it’s something that we really tried to highlight for our passengers. And point out is a potential risk if you’re really trying to protect yourself. 

And I mean, the first thing that passengers need to ask again is, is who am I putting at risk? Am I at risk? Do I have a family member or roommate, someone that I work with closely who may be at risk? And then to be extra careful then, and maybe you can play it a little more fast and loose if nobody that you attend to come into contact with could be put at risk if you get sick.

Damian: And then, in other ways of protection. We’ve talked about , choosing the right travel suppliers…those that are taking the right measures to keep people safe. 

And then we’ve talked a little bit about some personal choices as far as wearing masks and making smart choices as far as what you’re using to get from here to there as far as Uber’s or taxicabs. How about protecting finances? So if you’re booking a trip out into the future, and, we’re not quite through this yet, so we’re not quite sure what’s going to happen. Do you have any sort of tips as far as ways to protect your investment in that trip?

Simone: Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m sure you’re giving a lot of people advice on this too, on the insurance front. A lot of people are buying travel insurance. You have to get the right type of coverage based on what you think your risk is, to make getting a refund really easy. Aside from that, I would say working with a company like TravelMax, I mean, not to like to be blatantly self promoting here, but our team, we’re like a bunch of travel lawyers. You know, we’ll sit on hold and fight with an airline or a hotel or whatever it may be to fight to get a refund. And also just spend that time on hold that you don’t need to, to save you time, cause even when you book directly with an airline, even when they have a policy that involves you getting a refund, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to make it easy.

Most airlines really need help  financially right now. And that means that it’s really not in their best interest to give you your cash back. They’re really trying to push for, “Hey, maintain the balance with us…we’lll make it last for two years instead of one”. So if you really want to get your money back, book with a travel agency or either get travel insurance, that will make it really easy to have your insure refund you, or work with a travel agency that will sit on hold for you, cause it’s not going to be easy to get that refund.

But of course, check your refund policies. That’s really important. And more than that, do not book with a third party. There are OTAs, online travel agencies think, you know, Orbitz, Kayak or whatever, like, you know, basically third parties that are doing bookings that are larger, like Expedia for example.

Some of those are gonna go under, some of them are going out of business. Some of them are unable to provide refunds to passengers. And what happens is maybe the airline is sending the refund to those businesses, but because they’re going insolvent because they have so many cash problems. They will not be sending those refunds to their passengers.

And then also be really careful about booking, not just with third parties who are not directly the airline, or at least a very trusted travel agency, but resellers of some form of travel. I’m talking about where, you know, maybe people are reselling hotel rooms, on a third party website because you know that in that case, who knows where the refund is going to go. And those businesses are, again, at risk of bankruptcy. Right now, they’re not necessarily able to honor the same promises that they’ve been able to make when businesses is good and when their businesses are sound.

So you just have to be super, super careful and wary about that. And if you liked booking more informal travel to save money in the past, which my husband and I always do, like we always book Airbnb because we just can’t stomach, you know, really expensive hotel rooms. Maybe now’s not the time to be doing that because Airbnb typically has horrible refund policies, and you can’t, for example, show up at an Airbnb and say, “Oh, this is too dirty. You know, I want a different room”. So try to go with solvent, large, stable businesses that have clear refund policies or work with experts who are able to make those checks for you and fight for your refunds for you

As long as you think that travel is uncertain or you might need to make changes. I mean, most of the people who work with us work with us because, you know, their trips are a little more complicated or they have larger corporate needs. Everyone knows it’s super easy to book your own travel and, and normally manage a trip using whatever channel you want when, when times are good.

I mean, there may be an odd scam or something, so it’s extra careful. You need to be extra careful now, but we wouldn’t say it’s a terrible idea to. Play it safe in general.

Damian: Yes. I think a lot of these tips are good going forward regardless of the situation. And I just wanted to clarify something as far as third party booking sites, like Expedia, cancellations in that case or refunds, does the buyer…are they not getting it directly through the airline? Is it, is it always going through that third party provider when they need to get a refund?

Simone: That really depends. And we have unique insight into this because we’re a wholesaler, so we actually have even OTAs that in some cases may purchase inventory through us, and we see how the process works. It really depends on how this third party chooses to handle their transactions.

In some cases, they will run their customer’s credit cards directly with the airline, meaning that if an airline grants a refund, the refund goes directly to that customer’s credit card.

In other cases, they will add a service fee or they will just for some other reason, charge the customer’s credit card, the passenger’s credit card to their own merchant. Or they may even use us as a merchant in some cases. And in that case, when the airline issues a refund, the refund will go directly to the merchant, and then the agency, meaning that it’s up to the agency, then to take that money and send it on again to the passenger, that can take a lot of time. I had already taken the airlines up to 21 days even more to issue refunds to passengers.

So it’s just an unnecessary complication that we really wouldn’t recommend. And frankly, you know, if you want to buy travel online or a flight online, you don’t want to work with an agency, there’s no reason why not, although sometimes the prices are slightly higher, usually not these days to put directly on the airline’s website.

It’s just a safer way to go.

Damian:  I think that will be surprising to a lot of listeners…the fact that there could be so many complications in using one of the comparison sites, because it makes it very easy to shop for your flight. But, I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that there could be so much complication when it comes to a refund or any sort of changes, and you don’t know exactly who was going through it. So I think that will be very helpful.

Simone: And as a general PSA, a really important thing is. You probably, I mean, like if you as a random listener have probably purchased travel from like some random third party when you thought you were buying it directly from the vendor, because, meta search engines, like for flights like Kayak, like Google flights, they serve inventory from anyone who’s decided to participate in that meta search engine just serve their content onto it.

And in some of these cases, they’re clients of ours…and I get so many calls, every week from passengers who thought they bought a flight directly from Delta, who thought they’d bought a flight directly from United, just cause they sort of click, click, click…hey made the purchase, it was done.

They didn’t realize that they were actually buying from an agency. And so they call the airline. And then the airline gives them my cell phone number. They call my cell phone number and they’re like, what happened? I bought a flight from Delta and then now they won’t give me a refund cause they said it was purchased through TravelMax.

And then I have to find the agency that sold the inventory. So just be really careful who you’re buying from. You know, just because you see a flight on Kayak or you see a flight on Google flights and you go ahead and you just click whatever the best price is and buy it, that doesn’t mean that you’re buying directly from the airline.

I mean…in the end, you’re buying the airline’s inventory, but there’s another third party in there that’s going to complicate things.

Damian: So in the end, I think you said this a minute ago, if you’re not using an agent, go directly to the supplier versus one of the…a comparison site or a third party, 

Simone: yeah, and only an agent that you trust. That’s solvent. That’s a real person. You want to make sure you know who you’re working with.

Damian: Well, great. That kind of transitions us…we’ll move away from coronavirus a little bit, I’d like to finish with just some general travel advice, that’s what the podcast is about, is helping people with worry free travel.

And as an expert in travel management, you have a ton of clients, you send them to all sorts of destinations, and experience a lot of different situations. So I’m sure you can provide some insights. And you might’ve covered a few of these before, but, what sort of essential tips would you give to travelers if they want to limit their worries?

Simone: Well, one thing that we have really started to swear by is to schedule. Cars to pick us up at airports, especially now that we have an infant, in other countries especially, cause often it’s very inexpensive. It may cost exactly the same as an Uber, but then you have someone waiting for you with a car that’s ready to pick you up.

In terms of traveling with an infant, we did that a lot…our baby was three weeks old when he started flying internationally and nationally.

So my favorite travel tip is…we purchased a bunch of tapes when I was pregnant cause we tried to hide the fact that I was pregnant so people wouldn’t, you know, not take me seriously professionally.

And we just use those same capes that we use to hide the pregnancy, to basically put our baby in a sling on my body and keep the baby under the cape. And no one even knew that I had an infant with me. Plus it sort of blocked him, you know, going through TSA and everything, from like sneezing and coughing and anything else.

Because whether or not there is a current virus they’re always at risk. Individuals who are traveling, who may be pregnant, who may have an infant that hasn’t had all its vaccines. So, now I swear by capes, which you can buy, custom made, on sites like Etsy for under a hundred dollars, that are really nice.

Packing minimally is such a big difference because hauling around bags, as you know, it’s the worst thing in the world. 

So what I swear by is, and you can get these on Amazon, these hanging shelves that collapse into a carry on suitcase, but that allows you to fold your clothes, socks, underwear…it’s like quite a lot of clothing into three or four shelves that then collapse and fold into a very, very compact suitcase shaped bag.

Essentially you put it into your suitcase, there’s still more room in your carry-on suitcase after that and has been stuffed in, and then all you have to do is just hang it up.

There’s really no unpacking. There’s no digging through, a bunch of bunched up clothes. I actually live out of that now, and we haven’t traveled in quite some time now because of the pandemic, but all my clothes are still neatly folded into this hanging shelf system for travel, and it’s, it’s…

Damian: not seen that before.

Simone: they’re amazing. It’s just hanging right above my carry on bag in my closet and all I have to do is just basically dump it down if I need to move, which we always do. So I recommend that you really don’t need all those clothes.

Damian: Yeah. Well we’re definitely going to link to this because I need to check it out too. So, just to clarify, I’m kind of picturing, I think my wife has some sort of shoe hanger, so it’s like little pockets and it hangs up and I could see where they might collapse as it’s something kind of like that.

Simone: It’s exactly like that, but like a little longer, like wider, so you can fold in clothing,

Damian: that’s definitely, that sounds great.

Simone: lifesaver. It’s one of the best purchases I have ever made. 

Damian:So mistakes, people mess things up all the time. What are common mistakes that you see travelers making that you can help them avoid?

Simone: I think we discussed one in depth, which is not knowing who you’re buying from, that that’s a huge thing. One thing that we see, cause we see so many trips come through us all the time and we see very clear patterns and who is happy with their trip and who is not. And a lot of it comes down to knowing what you want to optimize for and being willing to pay for the stuff that matters to you.

The hotels and other services are really good at marketing very cheap products to make them look good. But there’s a reason why, unless you’re talking about a country where prices are just generally lower, the super cheapest flights and the super cheapest products are super cheap…whether it’s basic economy or, you know “four star hotel” that’s suspiciously low priced, you know, we often give people those lowest price options, like basic economy where you can’t bring on a suitcase. 

You can’t basically have to pay someone $5 for them to just look at you, and we’ve given people quotes for the cheapest hotels and often they choose it because they want to save as much money as possible and the photos look okay, and then they’re miserable on their trip and it really wasn’t worth it to, you know, save $20 here, $50 there, maybe even a hundred dollars to go through that discomfort. So no. What this is about, you know, whether it’s business travel or leisure traveling, you probably want to be comfortable and it’s not always best to travel based on the lowest price available, which we see so many people tempted to do.

Damian:But then going back to looking at some of the great deals right now, how would you, how would you balance those two things out, the understanding that you get what you pay for, but also you see a deal that you just can’t pass up on.

Simone: I think it’s just a matter of weighing the risks and understanding the company. If it’s a product or service that, you know, I’ve got on a United flight before you say, yeah, this is all going to be good. And you’ve seen what United’s policies are. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t worry about deals like that.

When you know what their refund policies are and you know, Hey, there’s a risk that I may not be able to do this. Go for it 100%, just avoid…there will be a lot of travel scams that come out of the pandemic. There are already weird pandemics scams, coming out. So I would just say, if you’re going to go for a deal, go for a deal that is directly with the vendor.

So there’s not some, you know, third party in between who might be misrepresenting information, and only go with vendors that you trust and that you believe are financially solvent.

Damian: Yeah. It seems like putting the value in the company.

Simone: Yeah, because I mean, in the travel industry, businesses will start dropping like flies. Already plenty of airlines have filed for bankruptcy or whatever the national equivalent is…and we…even in times with the smaller airlines that we’re accustomed to working with. Oh, they would disappear all the time.

I think people don’t realize, especially with smaller airline brands, how actually easy it is to create an airline because you just rent everything. You rent the airplanes, you get, you know, a small crew, very easily you rent that really crappy part of an airport. You know, you get those slots. It’s, it’s not that hard, meaning that the airlines are surprisingly delicate, especially the smaller ones. So it’s, it’s really important to be careful.

Damian:And do you have any sort of final big idea, piece of advice for travelers?

Simone: Yeah, I would say, you know, travel is safe. Travel is, is, okay. I mean, you’re, you’re putting yourself at risk by exposing yourself to people but you have to consider all the unregulated ways in which you were being exposed to people every day. 

When you go to grocery stores, if you’re going to some place where people aren’t being really careful about physical distance, getting in an Uber or Lyft or a taxi or on a bus, all of those involve exposures to people.

You know, it’s, it’s very, where we are right now is, is very similar to where people are with driving versus flying. It’s illogical that people would be afraid of flying when you consider that the most dangerous thing you do is get on a freeway in normal traffic and get to the airport.

Driving is just so much more dangerous from a statistical standpoint and flying right now and traveling right now…I would consider it to actually be safer than many other things that you might do because they are, airlines, travel vendors, hotels especially are subject to so much scrutiny right now.

They have to clean things extra. You know, many airports are starting to do temperature checks, provide testing. I would rather go where there’s a lot of scrutiny and a lot of checking and not where you’re just not conveniently hearing about things going wrong, because to your point earlier, a lot of people already have gotten Codin-19 without knowing it, just because this is a big measurement problem and a big, you know, being aware of the problem spreading issue.

So if you want to travel, travel, just be smart about it.

Damian: Great advice. What’s the first destination after the coronavirus is done? What’s the first recreational, not for work, but for the place that you want to go with your family?

Simone: Oh gosh, we were really hoping to go to Zurich. I’ve never been, and we had earmarked some time in August to go out there. I don’t know if that’ll happen. but we’re super keen on it. We like taking trips where we just sort of live somewhere, in an Airbnb for a week, and just.

Actually work there. We’ll take a vacation, but we just work and live and commute and go grocery shopping and maybe get a haircut or you know, like a doctor’s appointment to really see what it’s like to live there. We did that with Ireland in January. We did that with Seoul, which was an amazing experience, the previous year.

So I highly recommend those types of vacations. They’re, they’re wonderful. And now that remote work is more pervasive. You can totally do it.

Damian:where can people find you online if they want to read more about what you do and work on the track you down online?

Simone: You can learn about travel at travelmax.com. and you can always feel free to email travel questions to us. If you want to sanity test something or if you want help with travel, I can connect you to one of our most skilled team members related to any trip you want to take. You can email ceo@travelmax.com.

Damian: Fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us today. You’ve provided a lot of great insight. I think it will be very helpful and I appreciate it.

Simone: What a pleasure it was. Thank you.

In this episode I’m joined by Kirsten Maxwell from KidsAreATrip.com.

Kirsten is a former teacher, and now runs a blog that documents her travels with her family of 3 boys. In addition to her main blog Kids Are A Trip, Kirsten runs a Facebook group and separate site for multi-generational travel planning.

In the show she shares her coronavirus cancellation story, advice for family travel, and some tips and tricks from a former teacher on how to make it educational.

Selected Links from the Episode

• Kirsten Maxwell on Twitter
• Kids Are A Trip
• MultiGenerationalVacations.com
• Luxe Family Trips Facebook group

Show Notes & Timestamps

• How a lonely study abroad experience turned into a love of travel 00:01:12
• A travel log turns into a full travel website 00:03:08
• Dispelling the myths of being a travel blogger 00:04:50
• Kirsten’s derailed trip due to Covid-19 00:05:47
• How Kirsten is working through the refund process 00:07:13
• Lessons learned from this process 00:10:17
• How to plan travel going forward in light of Covid-19 00:11:23
• Tips for educational travel from a former teacher 00:13:21
• Kids and travel anxiety 00:16:22
• General tips for family travel 00:18:10
• Common family travel mistakes to avoid 00:18:59
• Debunking the myths of family travel 00:19:59
• Final travel advice for families 00:20:52

Listen

Transcript

Damian: Kirsten, thanks for joining us today.

Kirsten: Thank you for having me.

Damian: I know that you do have a great presence online, a lot of people do see your content, but I would love it if you can give sort of a 30-second overview of what you do?

Kirsten: I have a family travel website called kidsareatriip.com, and I’ve been writing for the last six years and we basically cover different travel experiences we have, and also how to make different things educational for your own kids when you’re traveling, safety tips, how to go, and you know, see the world and not worry about things beyond your own backyard, like being open to different experiences.

Damian: And you’re a former teacher, is that right?

Kirsten: That’s correct.

Damian: And that probably plays into a lot of your experience with the website and with travel and working with your family?

Kirsten: A ton, a ton. Originally, when we started traveling, that was the main focus. I always looked at travel as an education, so before we would even leave our house, we were learning. I was having the kids learn different languages, key phrases they should know, learning about the culture, reading books, looking at maps. So it was a constant education and they didn’t even realize it.

Damian: You fooled them into it

Kirsten: Right!

Damian: That’s a good way to do it. When did you know that you wanted to travel a lot? Was there an event that got you interested in being a bit of a traveler?

Kirsten: Yeah. I actually, when I was in college, I went and did a study abroad program in Spain and I was there for three months and I missed my family terribly. And I came home and I said, I will never do that again. And probably fast forward two years, and I met my husband and we both realized how much we enjoy traveling together in the United States.

So then for our honeymoon we decided we would do 23 days in Europe. We went and saw 14 different cities in 23 days. We were constantly on the move, thank goodness for those rail passes and after that it just never stopped. We have always loved traveling together and as we had kids, we knew that we were going to continue to travel with our kids and that’s where we are today…17 years later.

Damian: And with the study abroad, did it take some time for you to kind of turn around on that and realize that it was, it had value?

Kirsten: Yeah, I mean, at the time I was still in college. So there’s so much uncertainty as you’re getting toward the end of your college years and what you want to do with your life and how things are going to go and how everything’s gonna play out. And I think that, it just took some time for me to come back around and realize that like, this is something that was important.

The experience was important. I missed interacting with people of other cultures because I mean, I had met people from all over the world, from Belgium and Germany and Austria and had these great moments with them that people outside of my group that were a group of Americans I was traveling with and I missed it. Just the experience of being with other people and learning about who they were, what made them tick, what foods they liked. I mean, there’s just so many layers of international travel and  travel in general, and I really came to a point where I started to miss it.

Damian: And how did the website come about?

Kirsten: So we started traveling, like I said, with our kids, like from the second we had kids, we knew we were going to travel and as each, we have three boys, and as each one came along, we continued to travel. And when we started traveling with three kids pretty regularly, people would ask me, how do you do it? And my response was always, how do you not? And so I came to a point where I got tired of telling the story of how we do it..you know, we, we find these places in advance because I’ve always been one who planned my own trips and I got tired of telling the story. And so my husband said, well, “why don’t you put together a website?”.

And I thought about it and I met with a friend who was running a website at the time and she told me all the work that went into it and was like, Oh, no way. Not going to do that. That’s way too much work. And the more I thought about it, I thought, okay, maybe I’ll just use it as a travel journal, and my friends and family can read it and get some tips and, and then it just kind of blossomed from there.

I’ve learned a lot just. Having it and educating myself over the years about what people are looking for.

Damian: And you started a group, is that correct?

Kirsten:  I did. I have a Facebook group called Luxe family trips that I co-admin with two other travel writers, and we have over 2,500 families that come there for travel advice.

Damian: it’s amazing how great of a community that can be. There’s a lot of activity, a lot of back and forth.

Kirsten: There is, there are so many good tips. I learn a ton from being in it just from questions that people are asking of us and everybody kind of shares what they know and it’s just been a great experience for everybody.

Damian: And a lot of people have this certain image of a travel blogger or a travel influencer. Are there myths about that that you can dispel?

Kirsten: Yes…Uh, we are not jet setting all over the world. Some of us are, but those with families typically are not. We’re not all homeschoolers. I know there are tons of people that do homeschool and travel and that’s their main focus. But I, having been a teacher before, knew that was not what I wanted to do with my kids.

I’d like them to have a traditional school experience. And it is a ton of work. I mean, I can not tell you how many times I’ve been told, “Oh my gosh, you have the best job ever.” And I think, do you know how much time goes into writing, editing, diting photos. I mean, just the whole thing. Promoting it on social media when you’re done with it.

There are so many behind the scenes things that happen that people don’t see. They just see that the glitz and the glam

Damian: Just the fun

Kirsten: everything’s great…yeah

Damian:  So just moving on to the big topic of what everyone’s talking about right now, which is the Coronavirus and the huge effect that’s had on everything from travel to just our everyday lives. And I understand that you have a coronavirus story.

Would you like to share?

Kirsten: I do, so basically, we moved from Chicago to Texas last summer and I had a big trip plan that I was going to go live in Europe for a summer with my kids and just rent a house and write and relax and just kind of be off the grid. And of course I had to postpone that because we moved last summer. So this summer was going to be the big summer I finally got my trip.

I had planned for us to be in Greece for two weeks, and then we’re going to be in Italy for two weeks. And as everybody knows, that’s not going to happen. So I mean, Greece is so complicated to tackle on your own just because there are so many islands. There were so many flights I booked.

There were so many, you know, places to stay, transportation. I mean, it’s just all these moving pieces that I’m now having to remove from my credit card basically, and, and go through and make sure I’m checking all the boxes and getting my refunds and all those kinds of things. So it’s been quite a chore.

Damian: that’s not a small trip. Not a small vacation. As you said, this is kind of a big plan, a long awaited trip.

Kirsten: Yeah…

Damian: So now you’re dealing with all the little pieces of it and, and kind of going through the cancellations.

Kirsten: Yup. So I’ve, I mean, that’s where you come back to having to deal with European airlines, not necessarily the same as American airlines who thankfully we did have, we were flying with American airlines and they completely refunded all of our points, all of the money we paid…for every flight for everyone. No questions asked.

Then you’ve got the Greek airlines, which I laugh because they want, one company wanted to offer me a voucher I could use between now and March of next year, which really doesn’t help me because now we’re looking at doing this in June of next year, and then the other one wanted to give me the only refund they wanted to issue was the taxes that I had paid for like three different roundtrip tickets, which was literally maybe a quarter of the total purchase price.

So I went to my credit card and I went to insurance companies, and I’m still waiting for all of those things to play out. But again, trying to manage all the different moving pieces and make sure I’m following up with them.

So that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

Damian: Now with American, you said that they were great. Was that within their standard policies or were they making exceptions for the situation?

Kirsten: I’m not exactly sure because my husband was actually the one that called, I think they must have made some exceptions because usually they will not allow him to cancel flights that he’s not booked on because I was flying separately from him and they allowed him to go in and cancel everything.

So I think that they’re just, you know, realizing that this time it’s not really in their best interest to make things difficult for people.

Damian: Yeah. I think they’ve realized that they need to get ahead of it, and this is just going to be a big financial problem for them, but they might as well come out the other end as doing the right thing

Kirsten: Right, exactly.

Damian:  So just stepping back a little bit. As far as the timeline of events, it’s kind of been like Domino’s falling.

When did you know that you had to cancel? Was there a kind of a trigger that  made you realize that this was not going to happen?

Kirsten: Yeah. It’s very interesting being in the travel space, you talk to a lot of other people around the world, and just, I started hearing probably early April, these rumors of Europe being close to outsiders, you know, being close to Americans, possibly being close through the end of the year. And I was about mid-April and we were going to fly early June.

So I was kind of within the 60 day window and on a couple of the airfares, regular flights, I was pushing up against a cancellation deadline. So that was kind of what forced my hand. I canceled all the hotels and accommodations right off the bat because I knew that I could always reschedule those. Like if things change and we could go, then I could just find new hotels. But…

Damian: easier to just cancel…

Kirsten: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that’s kind of the whole process of what we did.

Damian: And this is certainly a unique situation, but looking back, did you take any lessons from it as far as booking trips in the future, would you do anything different when you plan travel again?

Kirsten: Wow. I think I learned a lot about travel insurance because I thought I was covered on a lot of different things that turned out not to be the case, so. You know, they, they have, they have nothing in their clause for pandemic. And you know, as you know, there’s just all these different things. I had bought additional insurance through third party vendors and like, “Oh no, sorry, that doesn’t cover it”.

Or through my credit card, I thought I might have coverage through them because they say we offer travel insurance on your purchases. Well, not in this case. So yeah, those kinds of things where I’m like, well, is the insurance really worth it? I mean, I think most of the time it is, but obviously in this situation, that didn’t work in

Damian: It’s definitely, it’s definitely shown some holes in travel insurance because it does cover a lot of stuff, but this is one of those things that insurance should be made for because it’s, it’s unforeseen, unexpected…you know, something that just happens and it’s not anybody’s fault.

Kirsten: Right, right.

Damian: It’s shown a little hole there.

Kirsten: Yeah. Yeah.

Damian: And then how about going forward and planning in the future as far as knowing when it’s okay to book again. What are your, what’s your strategy as far as dealing with coronavirus and planning going forward?

Kirsten: So you’re asking a person who travels for a living. So mine might look different than, you know, the average consumer out there. We’re actually looking right now at possibly, and I don’t want to commit to anything buying plane tickets because American is actually offering, I think refunds through the travel book through a certain time, up until the end of the year.

And don’t quote me on that cause I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I need to look into what their policies are. And so if, if these different airlines are having flexible booking policies, I think that I don’t have any issues with booking…looking kind of at places that are already starting to open up or had few cases.

Definitely looking at us only US travel at this point, because in talking to my friends in Europe, they’re closing their borders to anybody from the US because they do not want us bringing anything to them.

So it’s just kind of making sure that anything we book would be refundable. And probably looking at not traveling any time before mid July.

Damian: I know some of the airlines, as you said, are relaxing some of their terms as far as getting you to book something knowing that you can change it or cancel it…so it’s utilizing that a little bit and then maybe picking some destinations that, that you’d know a bit more about 

Kirsten: Yup. Or within driving distance even. I think that’s what…I think a lot of the summer will be for anyone who decides to travel, it’s going to be road trips. I know people are looking into RVs like nobody’s business and you know, “Hey, what’s that look like?” That’s something we could do. And so I think that’s going to be travel for a while in the U S is going to be road trips, national parks and staycations

Damian: Yeah. I think the desire is still there. It’s just picking a different way to do it.

Kirsten: Right

Damian: So just shifting away  for a little bit. I think it’s interesting too, you know, not only do you write extensively about family travel and traveling with three children, but then the teacher background I think is interesting. 

And you mentioned a little bit before, but what else has that brought to just how you plan trips and how you deal with being on the road and unexpected occurrences that happen. How has that helped?

Kirsten: Sure. I think, you know, as I mentioned, we always kind of educated our kids about destinations before we traveled with them. And as they’ve gotten older, it’s kind of shifted to more of like making sure that they’re addressing any needs at school before we go. Because we came from a school district that was very non-regulated when it came to family travel and they encouraged it…to one that’s very rigid and you have X number of days to travel a year, and if you don’t, you’re going to detention basically.

And so I’m always mindful of what teachers are going through if my kid is missing school, especially in high school, because it’s a lot more difficult to make up the content, but I think it’s all about having that open line of communication with teachers, making sure they know what I do or what my background is and what I do now for living.

And I took a kid out for six days this year and we went to Morocco. But I mean, as I explained to the teachers, it is so educational. It is a bucket list trip. It is a once in a lifetime experience. And they were all on board. But I mean. While we’re there, I’m having my kid make notes and write down what, you know, why other kids might like this trip or what kids will like about Morocco in general. I just, I’m constantly trying to be in their head and make them think about it outside of like, this is a great vacation.

What are they learning? Who are they making contact with? What are their takeaways?

Damian: Do you have a trick to not let them know you’re switching into teacher mode?

Kirsten: Hm,? That’s a great question…I think my kids are just so used to it at this point because we’ve been traveling forever. They know it’s coming. It’s, you know, they just kind of sit and wait for it. And sometimes I’ll let some time pass after the trip and then circle back around and be like, “Hey, do you want to put together a video for me about the trip?”. Or, you know, write some, an outline that we can work through together. They don’t love it, but they still know that it’s coming.

Damian: They know it’s the price that they pay

Kirsten: Yeah, exactly. I mean, hello, you got to have something come out of this.

Damian: And then you mentioned you do take some time off of school occasionally for trips, but you utilize vacation time. Otherwise it is kind of a mix between the two?

Kirsten: Yeah, yeah, yeah…now  we try to travel during their breaks. But that’s difficult. I mean, it just, you have crowds, you have airfare issues. So, but we’re finding ourselves in this situation where that’s really the only time we can travel. We used to travel all the time and not worry about taking them out of school, but it’s just shifted now and just kind of try to find when you can get the best deals and not miss too much school.

Damian:  And you mentioned a little bit about your study abroad experience and how for you, that was a scary thing. And I know it’s different with your kids traveling with their parents, or you know, with a parent at least…so it’s a little bit different, but do you see a bit of that with them?

Are they, can they be overwhelmed by travel at times? Have you ever noticed that?

Kirsten: Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, like they say all kids are different. My oldest one just did a study abroad program last year to the Netherlands and loved it so much. He can’t wait to go again and doesn’t want to go to school anywhere near home cause he thinks he just wants to explore the world. So I have that child.

Then I have the middle child who’s kind of a homebody, but likes adventure. And then my youngest, he suffers from a little bit of anxiety both in life and in general and travel and school. And I see that coming up. Not often, but sometimes they’ll pop it set up during trips.

And we went to Mexico over Christmas, and we did this tour of the cenote days, which are like these natural pools of what swimming pools kind of. And there was a zip line and they just made him feel uncomfortable and he just was like, Nope, not going to do it. And I’m sitting there thinking, wait, you’ve done zip lining in Costa Rica. I mean, this kid’s done zip lining all over the world, but yet something about that didn’t feel right to him. So I have to step back and accept that.

It’s okay. I mean, that they’re going to have, he’s going to have, especially these moments that he’s just not a hundred percent sure. And that’s okay. And so you kind of have to balance that out with your expectations and what your child feels comfortable with doing and just kind of respect them.

Damian: Well, that almost seems like a positive, where he’s learning to, to assess the situation and be able to make that decision for himself…

Kirsten: Yeah, absolutely.

Damian: Any general travel tips, with family travel?

Kirsten: You know, I think it’s, Oh, it really just depends on the ages, right? I think for all of the kids you’re traveling with, you need to be really the mindset that you have to work on a different schedule. They’re not going to travel, you know, full throttle. Let’s go see everything. Let’s check off all the museums.

Know that you have to build in the downtime for them. Time to run around in a park or a square, but just that you have to realize that they don’t function on the same time schedule as adults do. So make sure you’re always building in time to your vacations where they can just decompress and relax and be a kid.

Damian: Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot. I think that’s important just to have some open time and unscheduled time and it’s amazing how they can fill it.

Kirsten: Yeah, absolutely.

Damian: And how about mistakes? What do people commonly mess up when they’re trying to travel as a family of travel with children?

Kirsten: Number one, I think they’ve put a lot, parents in general, put a lot of pressure on themselves. When you’re flying on a plane to have these perfectly well behaved kids. And I always tell people, the odds of you seeing any of the people on this plane again are so slim, you should not worry while you’re on a plane.

I mean, yes, you should keep your kids like, you know, respectful and peaceful if you can, but like a crying baby. I mean, that’s just going to happen and yes, you might get some bad stares or whatever, but you’re never going to see those people again. Like 99% of the time. That’s just, that’s it. You know? So don’t be so hard on yourself and, you know, let kids be kids because that’s what they’re there to do.

It’s just, yes, they’re traveling, but they, you can’t hold them to the same expectations you’re holding the

Damian: Maybe lower the bar a little

Kirsten: Yeah, absolutely.

Damian: For behavior.

Kirsten: Yep, yep.

Damian: And what are the assumptions or myths about family travel that you can debunk?

Kirsten: I think there’s a lot of assumptions that it’s going to be easy. It’s just not. No, I mean, there’s so many.  I think about just family just trying to be comfortable with space. And you know, we tried so many times to squeeze us all into a hotel room and you know, you really have to find what works best for your family.

And not everybody fits into the same box. So I think what might work for one family is not going to work for the next. And you know, just be open minded about everything because we’re all kind of living a different life and you can’t tell what one person’s gonna like versus the next. And you know, there will be bumps along the road, but you know, you can obviously take things to, you know, to do as a parent, to keep them from getting out of hand. 

Damian: And is there a final, if you could boil it down to one final piece of advice for worry-free travel with families, what would that be?

Kirsten: Aside from it having insurance. No, I’m kidding. That’s because…that was actually my big lesson that I learned.

But the, you know, the final piece of advice I would say is, you know, don’t be afraid to explore beyond your backyard. There’s so much in this world that just, you know, down the road I mean, being new to a community after living somewhere for 14 years, I’m really learning that. 

Start with you own neighborhood, your own city, and learn about things that are close to you and take baby steps if you need to. But there’s a whole world out there to explore. And I think as we’re learning, when we’re inside this whole time that we really want to get out and explore it.

And so take those steps to show your kids the world. You know, whether it be down the street or on the other side of the world, because they will grow so much just from the experience.

Damian: Great advice.

You have a few places where you live online, where would you like to point people? Where can they find you?

Kirsten: So my website is kidsareatrip.com. I also run another site called  multigenerationalvacations.com and that’s where we do large family trips, giving advice for how you do that.

You can also find me on Instagram at kidsareatrip and Facebook kidsareatrip and multi gen vacations.

Damian: That’s great. We’ll put together a list of all of those links in the show notes. I appreciate it very much. This has been very helpful. I think we’ve had some great advice and insights and I appreciate your time.

Kirsten: Thank you so much. I’m so glad I was able to be a guest.

In this episode I’m joined by Tamara Gruber from We3Travel.com. 

Tamara is a self-described “obsessive travel planner”, and her website shares in depth information about destinations and travel advice.

In the show she shares her coronavirus cancellation story, advice for getting refunds from various travel suppliers, family travel tips, and mistakes to avoid.

Selected Links from the Episode

• Tamara Gruber Twitter
• We3Travel
• Vacation Mavens Podcast

Show Notes & Timestamps

• The story of how Tamara became an “Obsessive travel planner” 00:00:35
• The “A-Team” approach to travel planning 00:01:15
• Tamara’s story of dealing with her derailed Paris trip 00:03:09
• How “escalating” customer service calls can help solve problems 00:05:55
• Lessons learned from Covid19 for future booking 00:12:32
• Predicted changes to travel going forward 00:13:58
• More about how Tamara became an obsessive travel planner 00:16:12
• Tips for traveling with children 00:17:28
• The “sweet spot” age for kids and travel 00:18:02
• Common mistakes to avoid with family travel 00:20:35
• The difference between a Trip and a Vacation 00:22:16
• Final “Big Idea” piece of advice 00:22:48

Listen

Transcript

Damian: In this show we’re joined by Tamara Gruber, who runs a great website called We3Travel.com…and there she documents everything that her and her family have learned from traveling to 30 countries and 49 States. But more than just tips and travel guides, Tamara is a self-described “obsessive travel planner” and the website really shows it.

There are a ton of travel planning tips, there’s insights into everything that she’s learned doing that. Tamara’s also a co host of a podcast named Vacation Mavens, a family travel show with destination ideas and tips for traveling with kids. Thank you for joining us today.

Tamara: I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Damian: So I love the expression obsessive travel planner. A lot of people dread that. How did you find a way to enjoy it and then even get really good at it?

Tamara: I think it’s just part of my personality. I’m a little bit type A when it comes to those things. And what I found was that when we were on a trip and we didn’t have things planned, it led to too many moments where we’re kind of bickering with each other, you know, like, what are we going to do? I don’t know.

And you get into that, you know, and that either analysis paralysis or just that limbo of indecision and time ticks by, and by the time something is finally decided, everyone’s kind of angry. Maybe it doesn’t go the way you hope it, it’s going to. And it just takes away from the overall experience.

Whereas if you’re going and you’re following a plan, then things tend to go a little bit smoother. But my, one of the sayings that I’ve used is like, do you remember the show, The A-Team? And they used to say, it’s good to have a plan or something like that…

Damian: “I love it when a plan comes together”

Tamara: I love it when a plan comes together, exactly. And so my thing is like, I do love it when a plan comes together, but it doesn’t always, and then you have to go with the flow and, you know, we’ve gotten better at adapting and moving things around, but at least if you start with a plan, you’re better off.

Damian: it gives you a good structure to begin with.

Tamara: Yeah, exactly.

Damian: Yeah, I know what you mean. We’ve had moments where, you know, we start off something and then all of a sudden everyone’s looking at each other wondering, you know, so do we want to eat now…where should we go, which way should we head? And it’s great to have some sort of direction.

Tamara: Yeah. The only downside is when you are the planner, then you’re making all the decisions and sometimes it’s nice when you get to take a back seat and not have to do all of that work. I don’t mind the pre-planning, but sometimes like when you’re there, you’re like, “Oh, I have to decide. Am I your tour operator here?”

Damian: Right…somebody else make the call on this one

Tamara: Yeah, exactly. 

Damian: And how frequent does the family travel?

Tamara: Well, it’s a little bit less than it used to be because I have a high schooler and she’s quite busy with her own life and obviously we can’t pull her out of school. And so we stick to mostly the spring break and in the summer we take a few trips. And you know, maybe one or two, one or two other trips throughout the year.

But it used to be, you know, gosh, it used to be like as many weekends as we could, you know? But now it’s just more concentrated into these like longer, bigger trips. But we also do, you know, we do a lot of mother daughter trips as well. So my husband can’t always join us…and so my daughter and I will take off on our own adventures, which has been great bonding time for us.

Damian: So I know you do have an interesting story as far as the recent events with coronavirus and a big trip that you had planned. Can you talk a little bit about that? What’s your coronavirus story as far as your trip?

Tamara: I feel like there’s going to be many stories by the time this is done, but it started off with, we have a two week spring break, well I should say my daughter has a two week spring break in March, and we were planning on leaving on a trip to Paris and Amsterdam on March 13th and you know, all throughout, like late February, early March, we’re watching things, wondering how it’s going to go, but we’re still in that stage where it’s not quite hit home yet.

You know, and you’re not quite sure how quickly things are gonna progress. Like looking back, it’s almost unbelievable that we were naive enough to think that we were going…but at the same time, we had a lot of money wrapped up in that trip and we really didn’t want to just walk away from that. And so we kind of held on to the very end, kind of assuming that we’re probably going to have to cancel.

But it wasn’t until there was the announcement of the travel advisory to Europe that we made the move to cancel. So I ended up the day before we’re leaving, having to cancel everything. And at that point I had made dinner reservations and bought museum tickets, you know, I had a whole huge list of things, you know, to go through one by one and, and get canceled.

And some of that went well, and some of it didn’t go as well.

Damian: So you had every detail ready to go for the trip, and it came down to the day before

Tamara: the day before. Yeah.

Damian: And so the trigger was that CDC travel warning, is that correct?

Tamara: Yeah. I mean we were, we were pretty hesitant about it to begin with. And all the news I’ve been watching, it kind of looked like Macron was going to make an announcement about locking down. But I just wanted it to happen so that we had a clear guidance on what to do, because we didn’t want to be there and get locked down.

But we also knew we wouldn’t get any money back if we just canceled cause we were afraid, you know, that’s not really a reason. So we really waited until the last minute, and once there was the travel advisory, or at least had that as something to go to people and say, and then a few days later, France was in lockdown.

So we were very, very relieved that we didn’t go on the trip, but it was very stressful, like a week or two leading up to it. Just indecision…and, you know, as I said, I’m type A, so indecision kind of drives me crazy.

Damian: Well, it happened so quickly. Everyone went from being a little bit aware of the situation to getting it escalating so quickly that I can see what you mean.

Tamara: Yeah, exactly,

Damian: From, you know, “this will probably work out and let’s just see what happens” to, “oh my gosh, this probably is not going to happen” to, “it’s definitely not going to happen” within 10 days or so…

Tamara: yeah, yeah.

Damian: And what was the overall result of the cancellation? You mentioned everything from restaurant reservations and shows to flights and hotels. What was the general result, with the cancellations?

Tamara: I mean, it was a challenge…we had booked the airfare with points, which was helpful, at least, you know, we were pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be a problem depositing them back into our account.

But the problem was, of course, everyone jumped on the phone to try to make those cancellations. So it took 10 hours, I think, for us to get a call back.

And then luckily we were flying, we were flying Delta and they refunded the points and even refunded the taxes. So that wasn’t a problem, except for the time that it took to get through to them.

But then we had decided to do an apartment rental in Paris, cause you know, Paris is so expensive and trying to fit a family into a room, you tend to need a couple of rooms.

So we had done an apartment rental in Paris. Perfect. And their cancellation policy is 60 days. So we had to make our final payment on that in December, and from that point it was nonrefundable and we had travel insurance, but not that covers a pandemic as pretty much none of them do.

I had reached out to them maybe a week before we were supposed to leave a little bit less than that and asked, you know, like, “Hey, we’re watching this situation and if things change, you know, would you consider making a change to your cancellation policy if there’s a chance that I’m not even going to be able to get there?”.

And at that point they said, absolutely not. You know, it is what it is. And so we’re like, okay, we’re going to have to walk away from a lot of money there,but then after, ou know, things changed. And we said, look, we have to cancel. Like we’re not supposed to come to your country. They said, all right, let me get back to you and see what we can do.

And what they ended up doing was a 75% credit, which could only be applied to the same apartment, not even another apartment in their portfolio within the next year, so we took that because we didn’t really have a choice. 

So we’re hoping at some point we can still do Paris. We ended up actually rebooking for December, which we went from going in low season to going in a higher season.

So now we’d have to pay more because we have to make up that 25%, but then it’s also a higher rate. So that was, you know, not great, but then all of the other things I had bought trip insurance for our train from Paris to Amsterdam. So that was not a problem to cancel and refund.

I think I was able to do that online. It was very easy, but then like one of the tour companies that I had booked with, I reached out to say, you know, look, I can’t come. And the tour guide, it was through a platform so you can communicate through the platform, kind of like the way Airbnb does, where, you know, strips out the email addresses of the person.

But I said, you know, we can’t come. And he said, okay, it’s not a problem. We’ll refund you. And then he got back to me to say, Oh, the tour platform actually says, no, we’re not going to refund you because it’s within the 14 day window.

But then the museum closed, so I was like, there’s no way that you cannot refund me. You couldn’t have done the tour if I was there because the museum is closed. So it took me like raising that and escalating it a bit to be able to get that refund.

And, you know, same with our Airbnb in Amsterdam. We canceled on the last day that I could still get a 50% refund. But then like a day later, Airbnb announced that they were going to give a hundred percent refunds for stays for certain days.

And so I reached out and tried to escalate that, and I said, look, we were staying within these days and we’re only given a 50% refund. And they’re like, well, but you canceled like the day before we made this announcement. I’m like, yes, but the stay is still within your policy.

So again, that took like some escalating, but I was able to get a full refund there and then slowly like the museum, like you buy timed entry tickets to like the Reich’s museum, or the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House, you know, things like that. And so slowly, you know, reaching out to them, they ask, you know, would you like to make a donation or would you like your money back?

So it took a few weeks to get all of those refunded. So, yeah, it was, it was a mix. It definitely took a lot of time to work it all out, but it did work out in the end and we were relieved that we weren’t there when everything locked down because yeah, that certainly would have been miserable, but at the same time, we’re really wishing that we got one more trip in before all this happened.

Damian: Right. It seems like in a few of those cases you mentioned it took getting through to just a human on a phone and kind of getting beyond the general policy and getting to kind of explain a specific situation that seemed to help a little bit. Is that right?

Tamara: Yeah, I was able to do it all via email, but it did take, you know, a few rounds of trying to escalate things. And, and now we’re eagerly watching our summer trips that we also have planned and waiting for airlines to cancel so that we can get refunds there at least. And you know, all of that. So fun times.

Damian: I know. So when’s your next trip? What’s the next thing that you have concerns about?

Tamara: Well, we’re supposed to go, my husband and I are scheduled to go on a big splurge vacation for our 20th anniversary and my 50th birthday to Greece on July 2nd. And my daughter is supposed to go on a group trip to Israel leaving the end of June. So both of those things have still not formally been canceled.

And with Greece, the hotels are nonrefundable, so once again, I’m in that situation of going to be out a lot of money. You know, I would happily postpone to 2021 if they would allow us, but I’m waiting for the airline to make the first move, or for at least Greece to announce if and when they would, you know, open their border.

Right now, their borders are closed and I’m pretty sure they’re not going to want Americans back anytime soon, but they also need to worry about their economy. So waiting and seeing and reading the news every day.

Damian: It’s very frustrating because that seems so far off, you said, I think late June, early July, right? And it’s still months away, but with the way that this is going, it’s hard to say…the rules keep changing every couple of weeks it seems.

Tamara: Yeah, exactly. And that’s why as much as I just want to know what the timeline is, no one can really tell us that because you know, no one can predict the future quite that much. So unfortunately , I’m really needing to learn to work on my patience.

Damian: Which it sounds like is a challenge for you.

Tamara: It is, I’m not a go with the flow kind of person.

Damian: You’re an obsessive planner.

Tamara: Yeah, exactly.

Damian: So in dealing with the different companies that you did have to do cancellations with, do you have any general takeaways that  you would take into a future booking?

Tamara: Well, I would definitely never book a nonrefundable hotel again. When it comes to the Greece situation, but with Paris, you know, it’s tough because it would definitely be better to be in a hotel and have that 24 hour kind of cancellation policy. But at the same time that it’s really nice to be able to have the space and more of the feel of living like a local to get an apartment.

And so I think you just really have to look at those cancellation policies and, you know, decide, you know, which is better. I mean, at the time we figured, okay, the only reason we’re not going is if we’re sick or something horrible comes up and we have travel insurance for that. So it didn’t really cross our mind that there would be a way that we weren’t protected, you know, but I’ve learned, you know, that lesson now.

So for the near term, I think I would, you know, bypass, you know, some of that vacation rental, unless they clearly had a good cancellation policy.

Damian: Because in this case, Airbnb, they changed their policy just because of this unique situation.

Tamara: They did, they stepped up. So, you know, that was good. And, but with the other…Paris perfect, they did not. And I understand it’s just hard for a lot of these companies to afford to be able to do that too. So, you know, Airbnb has a little bit more cash in the bank to be more generous in terms of the cancellation.

Damian: And going forward, I’m sure there’s a lot of changes that will happen when we get back to traveling, and with your experience in scouring hotels and flights and things like that, I’m sure you have some ideas about what might change when we do get back to it.

Tamara: Yeah, I mean, I’ve been reading a lot and you know, some of it is becoming clearer as we go. You know, the airlines have started to announce what their policies will be mostly requiring. A face covering, certain policies around their extra cleaning, changes in the way that they do check in and boarding and even food service and in-flight service.

So I think…well, flying hasn’t been fun for a long time. It’s going to continue to be worse, you know, so you have to kind of be prepared with your mask, you know, and all of your sanitizing supplies as well as, you know, bringing your own snacks and water and things like that. So it’s definitely going to change.

I have heard that many of them are going to try to block out middle seats, to give more social distancing. At the same time, I’ve just heard of someone being on a fairly full flight because there’s so few flights running, you know, if you only have a flight every couple of days or you know, maybe every day, then you might get a few more people on that flight because obviously the airlines can’t afford to keep flying 10 people around the country.

Damian: Exactly. Well, this is a difficult situation and I agree we’ll get through it, but for right now, it’s very frustrating for everybody, for people that want to travel and just in general.

Tamara: It is. It is. And as you know, as much as we recognize the bigger challenges that are in play here from health and economic perspectives, you know, we all sometimes need something to look forward to…to get through tough times. And travel tends to be one of them. And so not knowing what that’s going to look like is hard, but you know, you don’t have to give up the dream. You could just have to postpone it.

Damian: Wait…maybe make some plans, some tentative plans while you’re waiting.

Tamara: Yeah. Cancelable refundable changeable plans.

Damian: Right. There’s a few asterisks there.

Well, moving on from coronavirus, I think you have a lot of stuff to share as far as travel planning, because I’m still fascinated with that. My wife does most of our travel planning, I just find it to be a challenge.

So I think you can share a lot with that. Was there a point or a trip that you kind of knew that you actually enjoyed it, that you liked digging into it?

Tamara: Well, I think when my daughter was young, we tended to do, you know, like simpler trips, like to the beach or to a resort or something like that. But it was one of our big trips when we went to Europe with her for the first time. We took her to Spain and I spent a ton of time researching that and trying to make sure that everything would go smoothly.

And I had this itinerary document printed out one time. And I was showing it to a friend of mine and she’s like, wow, you should do this for other people. And I was like, Hmm, maybe I should. And so that kind of set me on the path of, you know, a whole new business of, you know, should I do travel planning for people?

And I realized what I really loved was sharing what I’ve done, you know, with others and making it easier for people that want to do it themselves. And I did venture down the path of travel planning. As a travel advisor for a while, and I still do a little bit of consulting for destinations that I know really well.

But I just love sharing what we’ve learned, sharing my research, you know, sharing our experiences and helping people that have similar travel styles…figure out what they want to do and how to do it.

Damian: And specifically with family travel, because it’s certainly a different style of travel than, than a solo or couples traveling, marry couples, something like that. So what have you learned in family specific travel, traveling with children?

Tamara: Yeah, I mean, I think she took her first flight at five months, and we had done some road trips before that. So she’s been traveling for quite a while, and it definitely changes, you know, along the way. But it’s also nice to start early because they do get used to it. I’ve talked to a lot of families over the years, and some of them are like, well, we want to do something when they’re teens.

And I’m like, Ooh, you know, by that time it actually gets more challenging. I would start younger, like for me, the real sweet spot for some of those bigger trips were the school age because you have kids that are just sponges and they want to soak up the experience and learn and they’re excited about it.

the real sweet spot for some of those bigger trips were the school age because you have kids that are just sponges and they want to soak up the experience and learn and they’re excited about it.

Tamara Gruber, We3Travel.com

And that was just, it was beautiful from a parent perspective to see that excitement in their eyes and to see them making connections, you know, to something they’ve seen in a book to real life. And I remember being in a museum in Madrid, and my daughter was like,  I saw that painting and one of my books and I was like, Oh, that’s so amazing.

You know? So , I think, you know, it all starts with, with starting early and starting small, you know, like, don’t make your trip to Europe the first thing that you do with kids, because. They need to kind of ease into things. And every kid, you know, has different personalities. But I found just starting at home by doing day trips, visiting museums, exploring parks, taking hikes, you know, just, it gives them that adventurous spirit where they are moving outside of their bubble, whether that bubble is their neighborhood or their preschool or school, you know, or their family…it exposes them to new experiences. And, you know, hopefully sparks their curiosity. And so we’ve done a lot of, you know, more local types of exploration, turned into shorter trips, turned into road trips, you know, before we really took on a two week European trip.

Damian: Yeah. Just something much more manageable to ease into it.

Tamara: Yeah. And to get them used to those experiences. And I always feel like if you can do some, like laying the groundwork before you go. I’ve always been big on using things like books or TV shows or movies to try to introduce, you know, concepts.

I remember before taking my daughter to the dentist for the first time, I think we read like Curious George goes to the dentist, you know, like you try to help them understand what it’s going to be like.

And so I find with kids like getting them excited, you know, exposing them maybe to the food or showing them pictures or a video or reading a book together about the destination, they have more of a connection with it. It’s not like suddenly they’re just in this place. They don’t know where they are.

They don’t know why someone’s telling them about something that’s 2000 years old, instead we’ll be like, Oh yeah, I’ve learned about that. And, and suddenly it’s a lot more interesting.

Damian: I would think there would be just so much more engaged that way that you’ve tied it to something that’s in their day to day life like that.

Tamara: Yeah.

Damian: So what sort of mistakes might people make when they’re planning a family trip, things they might overlook? 

Tamara: Well, I found, you know, both with myself and you know, when I was helping various families as a travel advisor, that everyone has a tendency to want to pack things in.

You know, I just think, especially in the U S we have limited vacation time and we want to maximize it. And you know, I also want to utilize that vacation time that you have to have some kind of big experience and you feel like, well, I may not come back, so let’s fit it all in.

But that tends to lead to a lot of over tiredness and crankiness and other things. So I’ve really had to teach myself to slow down and make sure that I build in that downtime.

It was funny because for a Paris trip, you know, obviously there’s so many museums, so much to do in Paris. But I thoughtfully put together our itinerary so that we would have more downtime. And I found with a teen that teens actually need more downtime than younger kids, which seems counterintuitive, but it’s true, at least with the parents of other teens that I’ve talked to.

And so a friend of mine was going to be in Paris at the same time. She’s like, Oh, can we meet up for a glass of wine? And I’m like, well, I have some scheduled downtime on the Tuesday afternoon, and she just had to laugh at me that I had scheduled in downtime.

But I’m like, otherwise it’s just too tempting to fill that,  so definitely making sure that you have time. To chill out and relax is, you know, important and both in enjoying where you actually are so it’s not this forced March of we’re going to see this and do this, you know, but that you also just give people time to recover, get over jet lag, you know, and just take a little time.

You know, I always differentiate between a vacation and a trip. In that, you know, a vacation…sometimes you think of sitting around and doing nothing. Sitting on a beach, just relaxing. Right? And a trip is more like seeing and doing, and we tend to do more trips, so I need to make sure that there’s a vacation in our trip.

Damian: Right.  And just like you say, just planning a little bit of time to just be, or just, it’s amazing how kids fill in those blank spaces with something that’s very fun, but since they’ve chosen it…it just, it’s a little bit more organic, it seems to be a great break for them.

Tamara: Yeah, exactly.

Damian: Tamara, if there’s one piece of advice that you could impart on the audience before we wrap up here, what would that be? 

Tamara: Hmm. Well, I feel like in different times I might have something different to say, but I will say for now that I will follow everyone else’s advice, and as much as I want to encourage people to travel, I will encourage them to stay home for now until it is safe to travel. 

But as we mentioned earlier…start planning, start thinking about the future.

So I guess that’s the advice that I will leave them to, because I know for myself, when I have something to look forward to, it really gets me through some times that are a little bit more of a struggle.

Damian: Yeah. It’s amazing what that anticipation of a trip can do.  Tamara, I really appreciate you joining this week. , where can people find you online? Where would you like people to go to find you and read more about you?

Tamara: Well, the best place is my website, which is We3Travel.com, and from there you can find links to tons of blog posts, but you can also find links to my social, which is pretty much We3Travel across Instagram and Facebook and such…and if you are a podcast listener, we’d love to have you pop over to Vacation Mavens, which is on all the Apple podcasts and all the rest…and give it a listen.

Damian: That’s fantastic…all of that will be posted in the show links as well. I appreciate you joining this week and, we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks very much.

Tamara: Thanks, Damian.

Cruise travel has come to a complete halt throughout the world.

In fact, with thee no-sail order from the CDC and many ports not allowing entry, many currently sailing cruise ships are at anchor or waiting to dock…with up to 80,000 crew members on board.

And what if you have a cruise booked for later this year? Should you cancel, and if so how do you do it?

Today’s short show is about getting a refund or credit from the cruise line, and tips to make the process easier.

Show Notes & Timestamps

• The current CDC “No Sail” order guidelines for ships 00:00:28
• 2 options for cruise cancellations 00:01:15
• The downside to taking the cruise credit 00:02:16
• 5 tips for getting your cancellation 00:03:44
• Summary 00:05:09

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Safe Travels. This is the show that helps you get rid of your travel worries so he can sit back and relax and enjoy your trip.

But, as I have been saying recently, nobody’s really traveling right now. But we’re still talking about how to get back to it as we’re trying to clean up some of the mess from Coronavirus.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about cruises, cruise cancellations, and how to get a refund or a credit if your cruise was canceled.

A couple of weeks ago on April 9th the CDC extended their “no sail” order, which affected a lot of cruise travelers.

That order states that “Cruise ships cannot board passengers  and return to their sailing schedules until one of these three events takes place”.

First, the expiration of the department of health and human services declaration that coronavirus constitutes a public health emergency.

So basically it’s been declared a public health emergency and that would need to expire. That’s the first thing. 

The second thing that would negate the CDC’s “no sail” order would be if the CDC’s director made the decision to modify the “no sail” decision. So they would make the decision themselves.

Or,  a third, the passage of a hundred days from the time the new order is published. So there’s a bit of an expiration date there.

Until that happens, there’s about a hundred cruise ships in the Atlantic, Pacific Gulf of Mexico that are just remaining idle. They’re either in port or at anchor. And those ships have about 80,000 crew onboard.

So due to all of this, cruise lines have been canceling cruises  and they are giving travelers a couple of options as far as what to do with their reservation.

The basic options are a full refund or a cruise credit.

So obviously a refund would be a full reimbursement of all expenses that you paid. This is a good option. It gives you a lot of flexibility. You’re basically just getting your money back and you can wait until things clear up and you feel comfortable booking another cruise and you can move forward with that.

The second option is this…in an effort to try to keep the money in their bank account, the cruise lines are offering a cruise credit, but instead of just a dollar for dollar cruise credit, many lines are offering a sort of bonus…for example Royal Caribbean is offering a future cruise credit for 125% of the original amount paid.

So as an example, and just to make the math easy, let’s say you had $10,000 you had spent on a cruise. Option one would be to get all of that money back, you’d get $10,000.

Option two with the cruise credit would be 125% so your credit would be for $12,500 you’re getting an extra $2,500 in credit with the cruise line.

But, there’s a downside to that bonus money.

First of all, there is a deadline in which you need to use that cruise credit.

For example, that same line, Royal Caribbean, it’s stating it needs to be used by the end of the year 2021…and that seems like a lot of time, but we’re also dealing with something that we’ve never dealt with before.

And here’s another possibility. Cruise lines are having a very hard time right now. The industry has been in the news a lot over the past several years about safety, about sicknesses, onboard about viruses, even before Coronavirus.

And this isn’t going to help their industry. And like all travel suppliers, as the lockdowns and shutdowns start to ease, they are all going to be trying to get people back to travel.

So back to our example, if you take your $10,000 back  and pass up on the 125% bonus that they’re offering, it’s quite likely that you could see a deal in nine months or next year even, where the same cruise line is offering a trip that is well discounted and you can use that same $10,000 to buy a super discounted trip anyway.

Their rates will not go back to where they were at. They’re going to need to get people back on their ships and they’re going to need to do that by discounting fairs. So basically the 25% bonus that you’re getting by taking a credit could easily be made up for with future deals that they’ll probably offer.

Plus you get to choose exactly where you use it and even which cruise line you use it with. So it gives you a lot more flexibility.

So really the only risk there is that the discounted fares of the future  are not as good as the 25% bonus that you would get now. And I think that’s a pretty slim chance.

But now let’s talk about a few tips about how to work your way through a cancellation with a cruise line.

Let’s talk about those that might have a reservation coming up in the next year and if you have concerns about a cancellation.

Here’s five tips on how to navigate that. 

First of all, watch for email updates from the cruise line with which you booked. They will be keeping in touch as far as their reservations, as far as their cancellations due to coronavirus. As of right now, there is a “no sail” order,  so no travel is taking place.

Second,  review all of your options carefully and consider outside factors before making any sort of decision. That cruise credit for the future might be enticing, especially if it’s above the amount that you paid if you get that bonus…it might be the best option to just take the refund. This is back to what we were just talking about. You might have the time deadline in which you need to use the credit. It might be smarter just to take the refund and hope for a better deal in the future.

Number three, wait to see if the cruise line is going to cancel your cruise or extend their sailing suspension before making any moves on your own.

For example, Royal Caribbean’s cancellation policy through September 1st is allowing guests to cancel for a future credit up to 48 hours before setting sail.

If you cancel early, and then the cruise line later cancels that sailing, it may negate the option for a full refund. So wait to see what they do.

Every line has a different policy, so check on your cruise line’s website as you need to check that fine print

Number four…if you have worked with a travel advisor…with an agent on booking your trip, reach out to them with any questions because they’ll be able to help you.

Oftentimes they’ll have better lines of access to customer service with cruise lines.

And then when you are canceling, check in on any refunds for other prepaid expenses you might have made such as beverage packages or excursions.

So to summarize getting a refund or that credit, if your cruise was canceled because of Coronavirus you’ll likely see two options…a full refund or a credit.

The credit might have some sort of bonus to entice you to take it, but between the limitations on the date of usage for that and the probability that cruise lines will be very aggressive with their deals in the coming months, I would opt for the refund.

Watch for emails from your cruise line  because they will be communicating about cancellations. Review those two options carefully.

Wait to see if the cruise line cancels before you make the decision. If they cancel, you would have both options, but if you cancel, you might only have the one option.

Utilize a travel advisor if you booked your cruise with them, they can help.

And don’t forget any other prepaid expenses such as beverage packages or excursions.

Thanks again for listening…I appreciate it. Please share this if you can, and Safe Travels!

Coronavirus travel deals are getting hard to pass up. Travel suppliers are offering huge discounts on airfare, hotels, cruises, and more.

Flights are 50% off, 5-star hotels are 80% off, the list goes on and on.

But who isn’t a little nervous about booking trips while thee country still deals with coronavirus?

Today’s show has 4 tips for how to protect yourself  when you do decide to book travel.

Show Notes & Timestamps

• Checking the cancellation terms 00:00:31
• Get proof of terms in case they change 00:01:47
• The best payment option for extra protection is a credit card 00:02:32
• The best insurance option is CFAR 00:03:05
• Summary 00:03:34

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Transcript

Welcome to the Safe Travels podcast where we give you some tips and advice so you can sit back, relax, and have a trip without worries.

Today’s show is a followup to a couple of days ago when we talked a little bit about booking travel for later this year and whether or not that’s crazy in light of the coronavirus

After that show, I’ve heard several questions about it and I thought we would do another follow up just to broaden the topic a little bit. It’s still a short show.

There’s four tips I’d like to talk about and we’re really going to focus on how to protect yourself when you do book one of those trips.

The first thing is this, check the cancellation terms really carefully.

We went into this with detail the other day, but the gist here is that travel suppliers, whether it be airlines or cruise lines or hotels, are all making adjustments to their cancellation policies in an effort to try to entice travelers to book trips.

Basically, they’re making things much more flexible. They’re giving you more options to cancel. They’re giving them more time to cancel.

Really, a lot of the cancellation abilities that have been stripped out of the terms and conditions from various travel suppliers over the past decade have reappeared.

Airlines are letting you book trips with a lot of flexibility for changing them or canceling them with no fees.

Hotels are taking reservations where you can cancel them up to a week ahead of time with no cancellation fee.

This kind of flexibility has become a paid upgrade over the past several years. But like I said, they’re trying to entice you back into purchasing travel.

So they’re being a lot more flexible now, but it’s very important to read these terms carefully.

The good thing is that usually things like this can be buried very deep and the fine print, but in this case, they’re using it as a way to sell.

I’ve also been noticing that companies are changing the terms and conditions and making adjustments. So it’s important to pay attention when you are buying. Make sure you fully understand what the terms are.

So that’s the first way to protect yourself. With airlines, hotels, cruise lines, any travel supplier, what are the terms, conditions, and look for what they’re offering as far as cancellation.

The next tip is to get proof of those terms and conditions. As I said, they tend to be changing pretty often.

And here’s why that might be a problem. Imagine you find a great deal. The terms for canceling are very flexible, so you go ahead and make that reservation.

Then in two months you decide that you can’t take the trip and you want to take advantage of their flexible terms, but in the meantime, the travel supplier has changed those terms.  And when you try to cancel, they claim that you’re not able to do so.

So in that situation, it would be really nice to have some sort of proof of what the terms of condition said at the time that you purchased.

So what does that mean? It could be anything from a screenshot of the terms and conditions page. You can print something out, you can use your email confirmation. Anything that gives you some proof that you can hand it to them and say, “I bought this trip under these terms and I am owed a refund”.

The next thing on the list offers some extra protection for you and the tip is to make sure they use a credit card for your purchase as opposed to a debit card or cash or check.

Basically when you use a credit card, you get an extra layer of protection for cancellations. Specifically if the travel supplier were to go out of business.

For example, if due to the downturn in business from Coronavirus, a travel supplier or a travel provider were to go out of business or go bankrupt…you might be able to file a chargeback with the credit card company and get reimbursed. This is certainly not guaranteed, but it could be a good option.

As I said, it gives you an extra layer of protection

And the final tip regards travel insurance and what the best option would be there. When it comes to protecting trips, a lot of people do think of travel insurance, but in the case of coronavirus, a lot of travel insurance policies do not list pandemics as a coverage reason for trip cancellation.

In fact, many policies actually specifically exclude it.

So for coronavirus specific concerns, the best option as far as travel insurance goes as a policy with cancel for any reason coverage.

Those policies do cost a little bit more, but they give you a lot of extra protection if you do need to cancel

So let’s summarize the ways that we can protect yourself. If you decide to cash in on one of these travel deals.

First, check the cancellation terms, because you’ll probably find some flexibility, but you should be fully aware of what they’re actually offering. 

Second, get proof of those terms. Print out a screenshot, something that you can show to the company down the road if you do need to cancel, and they claimed that they never had those terms.

Third, use a credit card instead of any other payment method so that you have an extra layer of protection. Specifically, you can file a chargeback if a travel supplier goes bankrupt.

And finally for travel insurance, the best option would be canceled for any recent coverage. Pandemics are often excluded, and cancel for any reason policy would give you the best coverage.

Thanks again for listening, I appreciate it. Please share the episode if you can. And again, Safe Travels!

Travel is done….for now.

But it’s not dead forever. Travel will return slowly as we work our way out of the Coronavirus lockdown.

But many of us have trips planned for the summer, fall, and beyond. 

And the question is, “Should I cancel those trips now or wait to see what happens?”.

Today’s show discusses how to answer that question, why, and how to make the right call.

Show Notes & Timestamps

• Creating a timeline of cancel dates 00:01:00
• 2 reasons why waiting to cancel might be smarter 00:02:47
• Recommendation for trips in 2 months 00:03:54
• How to get some flexibility from travel suppliers 00:04:25
• Getting someone on your side 00:05:07
• Summary 00:06:35

Listen

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Safe Travels…my name is Damian.

The goal of this show is to help you achieve worry-free travel. I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy your trip Today we’re going to answer the question, “Should I cancel my summer vacation or fall trip?”.

Nobody is traveling right now, but how about later in the summer or the fall or even the holidays?

Maybe you currently have plans. Maybe you want to make some plans, but you’re just not sure what to do.

First of all, you really don’t want to be unsafe. You want to stay healthy. You want to keep her family healthy.

Second of all, you don’t want to lose your money. You don’t want to book a trip, end up canceling and lose everything that you pay.

And finally, you don’t want to be stressed. You don’t want to have to worry about losing your trip, losing your money. None of that’s fun.

So many travelers right now are wondering, should I cancel my summer vacation? Should I cancel my fall trip even into the holidays?

Maybe you should postpone and you’re not sure when to make that final call. When do you make that decision?

The timing on this can matter. When you make these decisions can determine the amount of money that you’re able to get back or the flexibility that you might have in re-booking your trip or postponing it.

So here is how to know if you should cancel or if you should just wait it out.

First of all, you want to create some sort of timeline of when you need to make the decisions, when you need to make the call.

This is a big part of managing the stress of deciding whether you should take your trip or not. There’s a lot of wait and see right now, we are in mid April. But in general, if you don’t need to make the decision yet, just hold off.

Now, annoyingly, there’s no one size fits all answer because every company, every travel supplier has different terms and conditions as far as when they let you cancel, it completely depends on who you booked with and what their cancellation policies look like.

So you will have to do a little bit of homework here…read a little bit of fine print and understand when you need to make the decision.

You’re basically trying to figure out, is this a time sensitive decision?

So the first step is to make a list of all of the things that you have booked, your flights, your hotel accommodations, maybe your cruise, any tours or experiences. Anything that you have planned, anything that you have booked, anything that you’ve already put some money into as a deposit or even fully paid.

You can put it in a spreadsheet if you want, or just paper, if not So just as a sample trip, let’s say you’re going out to the Grand Canyon with your family, you’re going to rent a camper. You would have the flights to get there. You’d have a hotel for your first night, you’d have the camper rental that’s prepaid for. Maybe you’re taking a guided tour.

So make a list of all the different things that you’re spending some money on…then go through the different suppliers, the different providers and take note of the cancellation deadlines and take note of the penalty of the cancellation.

The deadline dates might be days after initial booking, days before departure, t might be a firm date. You want to determine when that cutoff point is, and then you also want to take note of the penalty of not making that date. So there might be a period of time where you get 100% of your money back, and then after a date, you could 75% of your money back, and then after another date, you get 50% of your money back. So for example, we had a VRBO recently that was 100% refundable until a certain date, and then after that became 50% and then in the final days up until the actual rental, it was 0%.

So you want to know when those deadlines are approaching and figure out when you need to start taking action. If that time is months away, I would recommend just waiting it out.

There’s two reasons for that.

First of all, it is less stressful if there is no need to do it Now, let the situation play out.

A lot of things can change with the shutdown. And part of the idea of this is taking away some of the stress and some of the worry. So if you do not need to make a decision for let’s say, two months, there’s no reason to.

And the second reason is it’s better to be canceled than for you to cancel on your own.

It’s better if the cruise line or the airline or a tour company cancels your trip than if you make the decision yourself…and here’s the reason: If you cancel, it’s your decision and you’re on the hook for the expenses.

If it’s out of your hands, if you are canceled, then you’ll have more flexibility in getting a refund.

For example, airlines, when they cancel your flight, owe you 100% cash refund, not a voucher or a credit, they are required to offer you a full refund.

Another example with travel insurance, if their supplier goes out of business, if they go bankrupt, that can be covered as well.

But if you cancel your trip on your own decision before that, you can lose all your money.

So that’s two reasons why it’s best just to wait. Things might change, and second of all, the decision might be taken out of your hands. And that’s a good thing.

I would recommend, if you have travel in the next two months…so between now and up until the middle of June… I would plan on making a change to your trip.

Most of the country is still in some sort of full lockdown right now. When it does start to lift, it won’t be all at once and I would expect that we’ll have disrupted travel for at least a few months.

If your trip is after the middle of June and into summer and into fall, I would just wait. As long as there’s no financial penalty to waiting and you’re not being asked to place additional deposits on it and you’re not putting more money on the line, there’s no reason to cancel, but that’s where you need to go back to those cancellation dates and the different penalties.

The next big thing you can do is reach out to those that you booked your trip with before you need to cancel or postpone.

So you have your timeline…you have the dates that you need to cancel by, and you have an idea of what the penalties are at the different dates.

So technically that is what you need to live by. However, none of these policies are written in stone, especially with what is going on right now.

So it really pays to reach out to the travel supplier and discuss your situation with them, have a conversation with them. There has been a lot of flexibility with different travel suppliers as far as their cancellation policies. So I wouldn’t just read the agreement and assume that those are the only options that you have.

When you call, the person on the other line does not want to lose your business. There’s a very good chance that they can have some flexibility. When all of this is over, they are going to want your business again…so they are incented to do the right thing.

If you booked a trip through a travel specialist, a travel expert, or an agent, let them try to do some fighting for you. First of all, travel specialists have great experience in this. They know the ins and outs of the business, so they certainly have a leg up.

They also have the time to do this. It can be pretty frustrating to sit on hold for a long time trying to get through to different vendors, And they might also have a little bit of weight to push around. Travel suppliers get a lot of business through agencies and travel advisors, so they want to keep them happy.

So there’s a pretty good chance you can get some flexibility on different travel suppliers cancellation policies if you ask the right way, either through yourself personally or through a travel expert.

In addition to a cancellation, you can also discuss postponing the trip. So in this case, you might be able to negotiate something with the supplier. Maybe if you postpone the trip, they will upgrade you or add extra nights or something like that. It’s a way for them to keep the sale and for you to get something extra out of it for not canceling.

This is also nice because you’re still supporting travel providers in these hard times. We all want them to be around when this is over. So letting them keep the revenue now is really going to help them out.

This is especially true for smaller independent businesses, small travel suppliers. They’re the ones that are really hurting right now. They’re not getting large checks from the government to stay in business, and I think you can see a lot of flexibility from them.

I know if I had a small inn or a small tour company and somebody called up wanting to cancel their trip, I would be quite happy if I can get them to postpone it, I’d be willing to give them some extra perks if I can keep that money in my bank account.

So make sure that you explore all of the options with the traveler provider. They might be flexible on cancellations. They might be flexible on postponing your trip and making it worth your while.

So let’s summarize.

If you’re thinking about canceling your summer vacation, your fall trip, or even into winter, and you’re not quite sure what to do, start by making a timeline of when you need to decide, figure out all of the dates, what are the cutoff points?

Get them all onto a piece of paper or into a spreadsheet.

Delayed the decision as long as possible. First of all, it’s less stressful…if you don’t need to decide now, don’t.

And second of all, it’s better if they cancel on you than if you cancel on them. It gives you more flexibility If you’re traveling in the next, now it’s the middle of April and the middle of June…there’s a pretty good chance that you are going to be disrupted.

So I would look at trying to change those plans. If you have something booked after that, wait it out if you can, again, look at your timeline, figure out if you can do that.

And finally get in touch with the travel suppliers about exceptions. They might make an exception and be flexible on the cancellation policies and they might also offer some incentives for postponing your trip. That way they can keep the business and give you a little bit something extra from being flexible with him.

I hope this has been helpful. Please share it if you can, and Safe Travels!

Travel deals are abundant right now, but is it crazy to book them?

Since Coronavirus shut down virtually all travel, the vacation industry is trying hard to get you to book a trip for the future. To do this, they are changing some of their long-held policies regarding fees and cancellations to get you to commit now.

Today’s show talks about how to take advantage of the great deals now, while still protecting your investment and making sure you can stay safe.

Show Notes & Timestamps

• Should you be booking travel for after Coronavirus? 00:00:42
• What you need to watch out for when booking for later 00:01:23
• Important reminder about your rights with canceled flights 00:02:13
• How hotels and homeshares are changing policies 00:02:51
• Summary 00:04:27

Listen

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Safe Travels podcast. My name is Damian. This is the show that helps you get rid of those travel worries so that you can sit back, relax, have a good time, and not worry so much.  

Today we’re going to be talking about booking travel in light of a Coronavirus. That might sound crazy, but it might be less risky than you actually think.

Even just a few months ago, we had the good old days of travel…you would pick a place to go, look at your calendar and try to find the right days, book the trip, and off you go.

But those days are gone for a little while. With the pandemic happening, essentially all travel is on hold and we’re in a holding pattern. We’re waiting to see what will happen.

However, at the same time, we see all of these travel suppliers reaching out with emails and advertisements showing all of their wonderful deals. They’re all trying to get people to spend some money on travel.

So should you be planning future travel now? The short answer is yes.

But there’s an asterix there.  You can start planning now, but it depends on a few things.

You need to be a little bit flexible. You need to have a decent risk tolerance. And, you need to be willing to do some homework and keep track of some travel supplier information.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

I see a lot of reports of people booking travel for Midsummer and afterwards. In fact, prices are about as cheap as they’ve been since 2001. And once things start to clear up, they’re going to increase pretty sharply and pretty quickly.

And the deals are pretty ridiculous. For peak times, like summer travel for New Year’s Eve, for Christmas time, you can see flights to Europe, to South America for just a few hundred dollars round trip.

And there are people booking those trips.

So the deals are certainly there, but here’s what to watch out for.

Typically when you want to cancel a flight or change a flight, you could expect to pay a few hundred dollars and any change in airfare, but now a lot of the major US carriers are offering free change fees and cancellations.

Now each airline is a little bit different…they have different windows where you need to be booking or different travel dates.

This really varies from airline to airline, so with each one you would need to look at the different dates that they’re stating. There’s either booking windows or travel windows, but if you’re within those guidelines, they’re offering free cancellations or free changes.

If you do change a flight, they just require that you pay any sort of difference in airfare,  but it gives you a lot of flexibility, lets you book a trip now that you think you might be able to take, that you hope you might be able to take, but you also know that you can change it if you need to.

And in most cases, that change window gives you through 2021.

And just as a side note, it’s important to remember that if a flight is canceled and there’s no reasonable rebooking option for you, airlines are required by law to issue you a refund. You don’t need to take a voucher or a credit when you’re actually entitled to get your money back. A lot of airlines might try to entice you to take the credit, maybe by offering bonuses, but the choice is yours. So remember, if the flight is canceled outside of your control and there is no reasonable rebooking option, they do need to give you your money back.

So basically, airlines are being pretty flexible with a lot of their booking options, with rebooking options, with cancellations.

So that’s where some of the homework comes in. Each airline is a little bit different, but if you’re willing to do the work, you can find some really good deals with a lot of flexibility.

As far as hotels and homestays like Airbnb, they’re getting a lot more flexible as well. 

Hotels are loosening up on their strict cancellation and rebooking policies.

For example, the CEO of Marriott international emailed customers on April 8th: “for guests making new reservations for any future arrival date, including reservations with prepaid rates between March 13th and June 30th, 2020 we will allow the reservation to be changed or canceled at no charge up to 24 hours before your scheduled arrival date”.

What’s kind of funny is that a lot of hotels are just going back to the way things used to be, where you can make a reservation and if you cancel it 24 hours ahead of time, there is no charge. Over the past several years that’s gone away…now it’s an upcharge to buy a room that is cancelable.

And then I mentioned Airbnb as well with home shares. They’ve been in the news because of their initial Coronavirus response…they had some restrictions and it did not cover bookings that weren’t in countries that were on lockdown, and they got a lot of bad press about that, but they’re trying to change things.

They’ve since expanded their extenuating circumstances policy include bookings that were made before March 14th for travel through May 31st

So in short, there are a lot of great deals out there.

I know airfare is dirt cheap. We take an annual trip to visit my parents in South Dakota, and we fly there from Boston, and we’re usually happy to pay $500-$600 for that plane…and I’ve been getting alerts that that flight is as low as $170 recently.

I think you’ll see the same thing with package trips. You might see some really great deals, and more importantly, you’re going to see companies being more flexible with changing those plans or canceling those plans.

They’re  trying to make travelers feel comfortable enough to buy travel, but also know that they can cancel the trip if they need to because of the situation.

So if you’re thinking about booking travel now for future trips and that you might be a little bit crazy, it seems overwhelming, but it might be less risky than you think.

Take a look at the  various companies’ policies. See how they’ve changed their policies for rebooking and cancellations. You can probably find some great deals, still protect yourself from financial loss, still stay safe if you want to stay home…but the opportunities out there.

Thanks for listening. I hope this has been helpful. Please share it if you can, and Safe Travels!