Did you know that hurricane season technically lasts 6 months of the year? Hurricane season starts on June 1 (next week) and ends on November 30. If you chose not to travel to anywhere that MAY be subject to a hurricane during that time of the year, you may not take many summer or fall vacations again.
Rather than NOT taking a summer or fall vacation ever again, My Vacation Lady is offering some tips that we have learned along the way. We found a very old blog post (from 2007) that is still very relevant.
Here are some tips for traveling during hurricane season:
- Buy travel insurance to cover emergency expenses such as extra days in the hotel and possibly airline fees.
- Before leaving home, find 1 person who will be able to serve as your point of contact for information and updates. This way, you only need to make 1 phone call or send 1 text or email to alert everyone of your whereabouts and status. This point of contact can also pass along updates to your boss, dog sitter and everyone else who needs to know.
- Take extra medication with you. If you are delayed in coming home due to any reason, including storms, airline delays, etc, at least you won’t get sick while you are waiting to return home.
- Take a color copy of your passport with you, just in case your original is lost during the turmoil. Also, leave a copy with your designated contact.
- Ask about which travel suppliers offer trip insurance that allows you to cancel for any reason. If a major storm is anticipated, you may want to just cancel the vacation in advance.
- Please bring your insurance information with you in case you need to call the insurance company for anything.
- Please give my phone # to your designated contact so that they can reach me to let me know what your status is and what help you need from me.
- Always take a credit card with you, just in case. Debit cards are great but if you have to pay for extra nights in a hotel, food, etc, you might end up exceeding the amount available in your debit card.
- Please alert your credit/debit card company that you will be traveling out to of the country so that they don’t deny charges from overseas.
- Try not to worry about what can go wrong with a vacation and focus on the fact that you ARE going on a vacation. We can work through any issues if any arise.
My Vacation Lady has been very lucky that in the 20+ years that we have been planning our clients’ vacations and honeymoons, we have only had 2 incidents where a hurricane effected our clients’ trips. We were able to get them home (albeit it a bit later than their anticipated return date) but safe and in one piece.
We have always vacationed during hurricane season when our kids were in school and even now that they are on their own. We always take travel insurance and we do follow our own tips for traveling during hurricane season.
For our clients who were effected by a hurricane, they were very thankful that they booked with My Vacation Lady rather than a huge online agency because with 1 call, text or email to us, we were working at our end to get them home safely.