How To Protect Your Trip From Hurricanes - Travel Talk #3

In this episode of Travel Talk, we dive into a critical but often overlooked aspect of vacation planning: hurricanes. With Hurricane Beryl currently impacting the Caribbean, we explore how to stay safe and protect your trip before and during a hurricane. Learn about the importance of travel insurance, steps to take if a hurricane hits your destination, and what to do if you're caught in a hurricane while on vacation. From personal anecdotes to practical advice, we cover all you need to know to navigate hurricane season safely. Don't let unexpected weather ruin your trip; stay informed and prepared. 

Transcript

00:00
It's Travel Talk by the travel agents. Your go-to for travel tips and the latest news. Welcome to today's Travel Talk. Today, I want to talk about something that I don't think many people really think about when they're planning their vacations, especially if they don't live near a beach already, or maybe they've never visited the Caribbean before. And today I want to talk about hurricanes. I want to talk about how can you stay safe during hurricanes?

00:29
What can you do to protect your trip or protect yourself, protect your family when it comes to hurricanes, before, during the trip, things like this. So it's just me again today for this travel talk with Hurricane Barrel currently in the Caribbean and kind of making its way over to Mexico and the hurricane season starting officially. I thought this could be a really good episode to talk about, you know, what is it like if

00:55
If you're stuck on location during a hurricane, what if you can't get out? What do you do? Uh, how can you protect your trip in the event that a hurricane just comes out of nowhere just before your trip? What, what, what do you do? What are the questions here? Right. And, uh, I've experienced this situation myself, uh, well, before I was a travel agent, when I was 23, I traveled to, uh, Puerto Rico, or maybe I was 24. Uh, I traveled to Puerto Rico for the first time and within 24 hours of arriving to Puerto Rico.

01:25
category five hurricane came out of nowhere. And we weren't staying at a hotel, we were staying at an Airbnb. I wasn't a travel agent, I wasn't experienced in travel or anything like that, and it was utter chaos and it was so stressful. And you can learn more about that story in one of our earlier episodes. It's all about how we escaped a hurricane in Puerto Rico. But today I wanna talk about, what can you do to protect yourself before the trip and what can you do during the trip?

01:54
So first things first, we always encourage travel insurance for folks who are traveling, especially nowadays with the state of the world really. Travel insurance is really, really helpful. It's not only going to protect you in the event that like a luggage gets lost or damaged or your flight gets canceled, it is going to prevent or help you in the situation where your freak weather events occur out of nowhere.

02:22
particularly in this case hurricanes. A lot of the times these trips that are affected are these all-inclusive trips, these trips to Jamaica, Mexico, the Dominican, Barbados, so on and so forth. So a lot of these all-inclusive packages, they tend to have travel protection or travel insurance as something that you can include in your trip and inside your package. And what's really great about these travel insurance packages is that

02:51
You can actually get full credit back for the value of your trip that you purchased, and you just have to use it within 360 days of that trip. So you'll have a full year to use that travel credit, and it's just the same as cash. Or you can get cash back. You get all of your money back, no expectation of making another booking for these all-inclusive packages. However, that cash option is going to be significantly more expensive.

03:19
And travel protection is going to be priced out based off of your age and the cost of the package. So as you can imagine, if you're older and you're looking at a more expensive trip, you're going to be paying more than maybe a college kid who's looking to go to a party resort for the weekend. However, it's really good to know what happens in the event that a hurricane comes out of nowhere. Maybe you have 24 hours before your plane departs for your vacation and all of a sudden

03:48
a hurricane is barreling towards the island or country that you're looking to go to for your trip. What do you do? Well, first things first, of course, if you do have a travel agent, please contact them. They're going to help you take care of everything that needs to be done. But if you don't have a travel agent, what you need to do is you need to contact who you booked that vacation with. A lot of the times people are going to use things like Apple's vaca- Apple vacations, or maybe they booked directly through the resort.

04:15
If you do one of those two things, you're gonna need to call them. Now understand that there are gonna be other people that are experiencing the same issue. And so they're going to be very busy, much more busy than any other time period. So be patient. You're gonna have to wait on that phone call and just wait until you can get ahold of the resort or the provider that sold you that all-inclusive package and let them know what's going on. They know what's going on, but let them know what you wanna do.

04:42
What your next steps are ask the questions. What do I need to do? Do I get my money back? Do I get my credit back? How do I use that credit? Can I travel next week ask these kind of questions because you could very easily postpone the trip just one week We we did that a few times this week where we've had clients who we're planning on going to Mexico But it doesn't look like it's the best time to go to Mexico with hurricane barrel going down to Mexico So we just postponed a lot of their trips

05:11
about a week back and we took care of all the phone call conversations and handled all that stuff. So that's a little insight as to what it looks like to actually use a travel agent to book your trips when it comes to travel protections and utilizing that insurance and rebooking and things like that. So that's the best case scenario when it comes to hurricanes, you know, you haven't traveled yet, you're able to get your money back, you're able to secure your trip and use it another time.

05:38
But what happens if you're on location and all of a sudden the hurricane comes out of nowhere? Well, if you're staying at a resort, the best thing for you to do is to work with that resort. They've experienced this situation more times than you can imagine. They're gonna know exactly where they're going to need to put you. They're going to know exactly how to feed you and give you water and things like that, depending on how serious the hurricane is. Obviously there's scales and levels to hurricane severity, but your best bet is to contact your

06:07
Resort manager ask them what you need to do and a lot of the times they're going to take care of you I mean every time they're gonna take care of you, but they're going to really help you through this situation They understand you're on vacation. They understand you've probably never experienced anything like this Just be patient with them. You know, this is a scary situation for them as well They have families that they want to go back to and be with during that time, but just be cautious just be calm and

06:35
listen to the resort managers and what they are telling you to do. Outside of that, what you can do is you can contact your airline that you booked the flight with to get you to that location and cut your trip short. That might require you to eat some of the cost of the trip. Maybe you have to pay for the rest of your hotel stay, but hey, being safe is better than paying a lot of money and just staying there, right? So it's better to be safe. Contact the airline that you've booked your trip with.

07:05
they're gonna know the situation. Let them know what you're willing to do. If you're willing to say, hey, just get me to, let's say the continental United States, I don't wanna be on an island, they can help you. In our situation with Puerto Rico, we didn't fly in or out of Florida getting to Puerto Rico, but I told the airline that we were working with, hey, just get us anywhere in the continental United States so we will drive back to our home state. And that's what they did, they got us to Florida. And...

07:34
They hooked us up with a rental car actually. We didn't have to pay for the rental car. And we just drove that rental car from Florida back home to Ohio, or sorry, back to another airport and we flew home from there. So that's another situation that you can consider. You can contact that airline and you can see about getting you to really any location, any location that's away from that hurricane. Of course, there's going to be limited availability. So maybe that doesn't always pan out. You're on an island and you can't drive anywhere.

08:04
Now you're in the probably the worst case situation where you don't have any other things to turn to outside of your hotel. But what if you're staying at maybe an Airbnb or a Verbo and you're on your trip and you don't have anyone to turn to when it comes to hurricane safety? This is where things are gonna be just based off of hurricane safety tips. You're gonna wanna make sure that

08:30
If you have a bathtub, you're gonna wanna fill that up with fresh cold water or fresh water. It won't be cold for long. Fresh water in your bathtub is the best place to put your water, okay? Because more than likely after the hurricane, you might not have fresh water. Probably not gonna have fresh water at all. So having that fresh water in your bathtub and filling it up as high as possible is going to ensure that you're gonna have some water for the days to come. The next tip was to actually take all of your food from your refrigerator and actually put it in your dishwasher.

09:00
That's because the dishwasher has that lock, that locking mechanism, as opposed to the refrigerator door just flying open. So that's gonna protect your food and keep your food safe. And it's still going to maintain a little bit of that food safety when it comes to like temperatures and things like that. Obviously when it comes to meat and things like that, that's another story. I probably wouldn't put meat in the rest of the food. Just look at your cans, your things like that. Keep it in a secure location where it might not fly and things like that.

09:29
And similar to tornadoes, you're going to want to be removed from any windows. Don't be by any windows. Keep yourself safe. You'll probably want to go to the local shelter. There's going to be a local shelter in place for people who don't have places to stay or maybe not adequate protection for the hurricane. This is usually going to be like a town hall or a high school gymnasium, things like that. So those are the worst case scenarios. Okay. Afterwards, you're going to have to deal with the.

09:58
aftermath of that hurricane and just stay calm, utilize your food and your water, try and get connected to airlines, see when they resume flights and things like that. That's the worst case scenario, right? Now, hurricanes can be scary stuff. They are scary stuff and it's really stressful going on your vacation and all of a sudden this thing has happened. And honestly, my best suggestion for you...

10:24
is to just have travel protection. And this is not even coming from the perspective of being a travel agent and trying to sell you anything. We don't ever try and really sell anything when it comes to being a travel agent. We just give you the best recommendation, honestly. And I can tell you from experience that had I had travel protection for this trip that I experienced in Puerto Rico for this hurricane, it would have been a lot less stressful because things would have been taken care of, let alone if I would have booked with a travel agent. I know

10:53
If I was on the phone with Brian and I knew him at the time, he would have gotten me out there a lot sooner than what I was able to do. Now, again, these are just recommendations. These are just easy tips with the hurricane season coming up. If you already have booked your trip and you don't have travel protection, you can actually go ahead and add that again, right? Just go back into the booking, ask your travel agent, ask Apple Vacations, ask the resort that you've booked with.

11:22
to add travel protection to the trip that you already have so that you can have that protection even though you've booked it for a few months. So those are some tips. I hope that's helped. I hope that's kind of maybe ease some tension if you have a trip coming up in the Caribbean. Hurricane season typically is August to about late October. I think nowadays we're gonna start seeing it being very early July, late June, all the way up to mid November.

11:50
So the hurricane season is probably going to expand a little bit, especially this season. I think this season's probably gonna be a pretty bad hurricane season. So make sure that your trips are insured. It's, you know, plan those trips to the Caribbean. Worst case scenario, you just cancel, get your money back, and reschedule. All right guys, be safe, and we'll talk to you soon.

12:25
Travel Talk by the travel agents. Your go-to for travel tips and the latest news.