I’m in the process of cancelling our four week holiday to Italy and Ethiopia, because of Covid-19.

When the virus broke out, I was a little suspicious we wouldn’t get to Ethiopia, but not in my wildest dreams, I never thought Italy could become the next epi-centre after China.

We planned and booked this vacation well before the Covid-19 became apparent in January 2020. While we could wait closer to our departure date to cancel our trip we have decided to be proactive and make a move now. Our travel is not essential and I have no wish to either contract the virus or have to go into isolation outside of New Zealand. I believe it is important we think of the community as a whole, and if travel is not essential it is better to stay at home and prevent any further contamination.

This video with Dr Peter Lim, a physician from Toronto, has a lot of useful information.

Even with travel insurance, it is hard navigating my way through this mess and cancelling the components of the trip. It seems that every travel insurance policy is slightly different, so best call your insurer.

To date Emirates, who we fly with frequently, has been a dream to deal with and have given us several options. We can:

1. Change the date for free. The date can be any date within 11 months of the original date of issue (our date of issue was the 3^rdJanuary).
2. Chose another destination, however, we would need to pay any applicable fare difference, at the time of rebooking. This sounds reasonable.
3. Our final option is to cancel under the standard cancellation policy. It says we can cancel any time prior to departure, for a fee of $500.00 per person. Not unreasonable.

We had hotels booked in Dubai and Italy and under Booking.com so we can get a full refund.

However, two pricey components of our travel plans are still in question.

We had booked a week in Tuscany with friends at a villa. We had used the same rental company before, Tuscany Now and More and had received excellent service. However, they are hedging their bets and basing their approach on the British Foreign Office – not ideal.

We are still awaiting a decision from World Journeys, through who we booked the Ethiopian leg of our vacation.

Let’s hope all these travel suppliers apply common sense to the predicament we all find ourselves in with Covid-19 and we continue to have a positive relationship post-Covid-19.

As I won’t be travelling anywhere for a while, I hope I can keep you all enthused about travel while the world is in a temporary lockdown. So next week, I’m starting ‘Throwback Thursday’s’ and will post some of my favourite blogs about destinations I loved. Just because we can’t travel now, it doesn’t mean we stop dreaming.

Dreaming of Mexico City, Mexico

Dreaming of Cinque Terre, Italy

Dreaming of Koh Samui, Thailand