How to Get Your Money Back for Cancelled Trips

So far this year, I have had to cancel three trips:

• A week-long visit to Shanghai
• A long weekend trip to Washington, D.C.
• A two week vacation in the Mediterranean

And the way things are looking lately, I may have to cancel more of them. I am definitely not going to stop planning travel, but I also can’t afford to lose tons of money on vacations that I’m not taking. Fortunately, I have been able to get my money back (or a credit) for every piece of these cancelled trips. Here’s how:

Create a list. List out everything you had booked and will need refunded, including flights, rental cars, hotel rooms, etc. I generally already have this information saved in trip folders, so it’s very easy to compile. You’ll want to make sure you have the following information:

1. Provider – airline, hotel room, platform through which you booked, etc.
2. Traveler name
3. Itinerary/ticket number
4. Confirmation code
5. Refundable status – non-refundable, refundable, credit available, etc.
6. Amount
7. Payment method

Refund the refundable. You’ve confirmed these reservations are refundable based on your list. Cancel them with ease and get your money back! These can generally be cancelled online with the click of a button, and they will provide you with an estimated timeline for when your refund will hit.

Play the long game. In most cases, at least in the US, you are entitled to a full refund if the provider cancels your reservation. However, if you cancel the reservation first, you may lose money or only receive a credit. Since you aren’t benefited by cancelling earlier, I highly recommend waiting until you are cancelled on. We knew we were going to cancel our trip to Shanghai a couple weeks before the airline cancelled our flights, but since we didn’t want to lose anything on our reservation, we waited for the airline to cancel and refund our money entirely. 

See if you can get a credit. I definitely made the mistake of booking non-refundable activities because “I didn’t plan to cancel.” Queue a global pandemic. In cases where my booking wasn’t cancelled, I was able to get a credit for a future purchase. Many travel providers are offering at least this sort of flexibility because they want to keep you booking travel now. We reached out for a credit for our flights to DC, and our hotel in Barcelona offered it on their own. It’s always worth asking to see if they can hook you up with a credit. In some cases, the provider will offer you more in credit than a cash refund, so see if that makes sense for you – that’s what our cruise line did.

Get your credit card company involved. This is my last resort option, as I prefer to communicate directly with travel providers to resolve these issues, but it’s an important option to have. You may find that some of your travel providers have cancelled your trip, but gone radio silent on your refund. If that’s the case, you can contest the charge with your credit card company. They’ll need information on who cancelled what when and for how much, but then the credit card company communicates directly with the travel provider, taking the burden off you to fight for your money back. 

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Ultimately, for these three trips, plus some of the changes we’ve dealt with for our upcoming vacation at the end of July, we have been able to get a full refund for almost everything, aside from one hotel and one flight, for which we’ve gotten credits to rebook. It requires some patience and monitoring, but you don’t have to lose money on cancelled trips – better to spend it on your next ones.