How to Use Travel Totals to Prevent COVID From Spoiling Your Vacation Plans
Due to travel bans, an increase in flight cancellations, and the general uncertainty surrounding the Delta option, people are booking matching vacations to ensure they can travel – a so-called travel stacking. Basically, it is a backup plan that ensures that you will continue to travel on the days you have already booked, even if your original travel plans fall apart. Here’s a look at how it works.
What is trip accumulation?
Travel totals are when you book more than one vacation for the same time with the intent to cancel all but one. This usually involves booking one big ambitious trip (overseas trip) and a smaller trip that is either in the United States or closer to home, such as Mexico or the Caribbean.
The reason is simple: COVID travel restrictions were unpredictable, making it difficult to plan a vacation with any certainty, especially since most people plan big trips months in advance. For example, many European countries have imposed travel restrictions after the European Union recently removed the United States from the “safe list” of countries for inbound travel. If you had been planning your trip from the beginning of this summer – when most people were expecting the borders to open in the fall – you would be forced to abandon your plans.
The fact is that many airlines and hotels have flexible cancellation policies that allow you to cancel or change plans at minimal cost or no cost, making them much more tempting to book. In this case, the real problem is that most travelers have their time booked already, and this sudden cancellation forces them to change their plans on the fly. Of course, these vacation days can be reassigned, but this is not always easy to do, especially if these days do not change and need to be used before the end of the year.
This is where a pre-booked backup plan comes in handy: if your ambitious travel plans collapse, you still have a vacation fallback (for example, you can still take a canceled trip to Florida rather than Spain). After all, hotel accommodation may be okay, but it may not impress you if you have already booked three weeks for international travel.
Just make sure you actually undo sooner
By booking the extra vacation you intend to take, you are taking away slots from other people who wish to take the same trip. For this reason, it is possible that airlines and hotels will eventually start cutting back on their flexible cancellation policies if more people start hiding their bookings. If you plan on adding trips, try to cancel all reservation bookings as soon as possible, not only because it is a polite act, but also because you are less likely to miss out on any last minute cancellation fees.