Travel

Coronavirus and Booking Travel: Considering the Risk

Published

4 months ago

April 19, 2020

Blabiz

Travel and travel planning are being disrupted by the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. For the latest updates, read The New York Times’s Covid-19 coverage here.

On March 12, the day after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, Sery Kim, a lawyer in Coppell, Texas, noticed that the number of American Airlines AAdvantage miles needed to book a May flight to Barbados she had been eyeing dropped from 130,000 to 30,000 — a decrease of nearly 77 percent.

Thus set off a four-day hunt for future trips. In addition to Barbados, Ms. Kim purchased six round-trip Southwest Airlines tickets, starting later in March, to Washington, D.C., where she keeps an apartment for work. She paid $99 apiece for flights that normally cost upward of $183, with dates extending into September. She spent $93 on a late-April flight to Miami that usually costs around $330. Then she booked a safari vacation in July for about $900 round trip to Cape Town — about half what she paid for a South Africa flight in 2016.

Ms. Kim, 41, was indulging in what might be called flight arbitrage. Inexpensive airfare deals abound currently; couple those with newly relaxed airline change and cancellation policies and some travelers are seeing little-to-no risk in pointing, clicking and purchasing. They are betting that things will have improved enough to travel, and if they haven’t, they can roll their money forward into an even later trip.

“There’s an arbitrage opportunity that has never really existed in modern air travel,” said Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights, an online alert service with more than two million members. “Not only are fares super low, but to be able to cancel if you decide not to take the trip is rare. And there are absolutely people taking advantage of it — not in a pejorative sense, but literally by booking flights for when hopefully, fingers crossed, things are safer.”

To proceed cautiously amid travel advisories and border closures, Scott’s Cheap Flights is only promoting deals from July onward, and only for airlines waiving change and cancellation fees.

After her April tour through Japan was canceled, with all of her payments successfully recouped, Karen Burrows, a 56-year-old health care worker, used Scott’s Cheap Flights to purchase a $282 round-trip flight from New York City to Athens, Greece, departing in September.

“It’s a comfort — a consolation prize — and a way to look forward to something else after the disappointment of Japan,” said Ms. Burrows, who lives in Feura Bush, N.Y. “I’ll probably wait until August, and if it’s not looking like things are going to be healthy, I’ll make changes with the airline. I wouldn’t make any nonrefundable accommodations at this point, either.”

September prices for Athens flights from New York City often cost upward of $1,000. But Ms. Burrows has another reference point: Two years ago, she paid $446 for a flight to Athens from Newark, N.J. — another Scott’s Cheap Flights find.

“The comparison of real prices today versus reference prices that consumers have in their memories — ones they may even be unaware that they hold — is leading to this kind of purchase behavior,” said Priya Raghubir, a New York University Stern School of Business professor who studies consumer psychology and spending.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Rina Baraz Nehdar, the editor in chief of the website L.A. Family Travel, had been watching round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Rome; August fares hovered around $900 apiece. In early March, she found $400 flights on Ovago, an online travel agency.

“Our trip isn’t scheduled until August so I pray we still get to go, and if so, I’m stoked about our great bargain. Since we can only travel during the time school is out, we typically have to pay premium prices. This was a nice relief for us,” said Ms. Baraz Nehdar, 45.

Cheap summer flights like the ones Ms. Baraz Nehdar found are expressly attributable to the coronavirus, said Mr. Keyes, of Scott’s Cheap Flights. Even though air travel has become generally less expensive in the last 40 years, summer has remained a much-sought-after — and therefore pricey — time to fly.

And with airlines poised to burn through $61 billion of their cash reserves during the second quarter of this year, according to a recent analysis by the International Air Transport Association, having customers on the books — even if they eventually cancel — is a strategic move.

“Selling cheaper tickets for future travel is a good way for airlines to generate sales activity and also start restoring consumer confidence for future travel, which gets shaken badly in events like this,” said Khalid Usman, senior vice president at Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm.

Although inexpensive airfare affects yield — the average fare per passenger per mile — it also helps drum up demand. According to new data from Hopper, a travel-booking app that analyzes and predicts flight prices, round-trip domestic airfare is down about 41 percent from last year and 44 percent from 2018.

Hayley Berg, Hopper’s economist, has seen demand shift to the latter half of the year; demand for international travel doesn’t pick up again until August. Skyscanner, a travel-deals website and app, saw a slight uptick in flight bookings in the last week of March (compared to earlier in the month) for departures in August, September and October.

But hopeful travelers looking to take advantage of what is effectively a buyers’ market should still know what they’re getting into.

“While governments around the world are planning to provide support to airlines financially, some element of financial risk for travelers remains, such as airlines canceling flights or, in the worst case scenario, airlines going out of business,” Mr. Usman said.

According to a policy that was reiterated by the Department of Transportation in early April, passengers are entitled to cash refunds if their flight is canceled (or substantially changed) for reasons relating to the coronavirus. Facing travel advisories and decreased demand, many airlines have already significantly reduced their service.

But passengers who voluntarily cancel may have little choice but to accept a voucher, which might not cover the cost of a more expensive ticket down the line and often expires 12 months after the original booking date.

That’s why some experienced travelers, like Nelson Yuan, a Hong Kong–based investment strategist who flew around 300,000 miles last year for business, haven’t gone beyond window-shopping.

“Cash is fungible. At this point, many airlines are effectively not giving refunds despite their stated policies; they’re short on cash so they’re pushing credits,” said Mr. Yuan, 37. “In that case you’re basically giving them a short-term loan.”

Ms. Kim was forced to cancel her Miami trip (without penalty) because the hotel she had hoped to book is closed. But despite the widespread stay-at-home orders and quarantine-on-arrival advisories, including in Barbados and South Africa, she remains undeterred about her other plans.

“Unless the airlines cancel the flights, I’m planning on going,” she said.

Sarah Firshein is a Brooklyn-based travel writer. If you need advice about a best-laid travel plan that went awry, send an email to travel@nytimes.com — Sarah is also our Tripped Up columnist.

Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world.

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Travel

Alert: Atletico Madrid says 2 members of group due to travel to Lisbon for Champions League test positive for coronavirus

Published

3 hours ago

August 9, 2020

Blabiz

https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Alert-Atletico-Madrid-says-2-members-of-group-15470688.php

Updated

12:24 pm PDT, Sunday, August 9, 2020

MADRID (AP) — Atletico Madrid says 2 members of group due to travel to Lisbon for Champions League test positive for coronavirus.

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Travel

Cayman Islands Will NOT Be Reopening On September 1st As Planned

Published

9 hours ago

August 9, 2020

Blabiz

Cayman Airways has scheduled a series of repatriation flights to Miami, Kingston, Jamaica and Le Ceiba, Honduras, which are scheduled to depart the Cayman Islands on September 1, 4, 11, 18 and 25 to Miami; September 2, 16 and 30 to Kingston; and August 19 and September 23 to Le Ceiba.

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Travel

Covid ship cases present a learning opportunity for cruising: Travel Weekly

Published

15 hours ago

August 9, 2020

Blabiz

Johanna Jainchill

Over the course of one week, four cruise ships that were among the first to resume service since the global cruise shutdown had to cut short their sailings after Covid-19 cases were reported onboard.

And while some industry observers took the opportunity to declare that those lines had set sail too soon, Frank Del Rio, CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, said during the company’s Q2 earnings call last week that while “there is no way to spin the initial re-emergence of Covid onboard vessels,” there is “an opportunity to learn from it.”

“This virus teaches us something every day,” he said. “While it’s disappointing, I’m glad the ports and the cruise companies that suffered these setbacks handled it very, very well, and we haven’t had a repeat of what happened earlier during the pandemic crisis.”

Dr. Jewel Mullen, an associate dean at University of Texas Austin’s Dell Medical School, told Travel Weekly last week that incidents like these “is part of what we need to know.”

As doctors and scientists discuss the resumption of travel in a Covid-19 world, she said, nobody is suggesting there won’t be cases — it’s how we deal with the cases that counts. And observations of cases and protocols in action will help scientists and cruise companies “understand how to continue to refine all of the preventive and protective measures,” she said.

This is true in many parts of society that are reopening. When Major League Baseball experienced Covid-19 outbreaks on the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals teams, it didn’t cancel the season, but the league did revise its protocols.

What the industry will now be looking at, in the cases of the Paul Gauguin, SeaDream and UnCruise Adventures sailings, is whether the ship protocols worked to prevent onboard transmission and if the subsequent landside quarantine of the guests keeps the virus from spreading into the community.

It is important to also remember that two of the lines that experienced Covid-19 cases on their ships last week, Hurtigruten and SeaDream, have both been sailing since June with no incidents.

“The virus is still out there,” Brad Tolkin, co-CEO of World Travel Holdings, told Travel Weekly last week. “As such, the consumer probably expected an outbreak. It would be naive to think that there would not be one.”

As the industry does learn more, it may be that cruise lines do decide to wait longer to resume service. Heather Gibson, a professor in the department of Tourism, Hospitality & Event Management at the University of Florida, said recent cases may have taught the industry to slow down.

“Do we need to wait a little longer to be able to get a better handle on this virus?” she asked. “Every day in science they find out something new about it. And that’s the part going forward where we’re stuck — we want to get back to normal but at the same time we can’t quite yet.

“So maybe the steps that we should take are smaller steps rather than these bigger steps.”

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