Most Saskatoon travellers will not see any changes to their winter travel plans even after natural disasters rocked much of the Caribbean and Mexico during the past few months.
Mira Laprell-Elliott, a travel adviser at Ixtapa Travel, says travelling to the eastern Caribbean, where the majority of the destruction occurred, is not as easily accessible to Saskatoon travellers because there are no direct or chartered flights to the majority of the islands.
But, she said the people who will likely see the biggest changes to their itineraries would be people who have booked cruises through the Caribbean.
“I have had a few clients affected,” Laprell-Elliott explains. “They were supposed to go during the February break, and I do know the cruise lines, most of them at least, have replaced St. Maarten with St. Croix. But the cruise lines are saying that the ships and the dates are going as planned, but they might add an extra sea day if a port has been scrapped or change it to another port.”
Popular hot spots for Saskatoon travellers like the Dominican Republic and Cuba also saw some destruction, but the majority of the tourist destinations — including Punta Cana and Puerto Plata in the Dominican and Varadero in Cuba — are back up and running, she confirms.
Mexico, which was hit by a devastating earthquake on Sept. 19, is also a safe bet for travellers as the epicentre of the ‘quake was far enough away from most popular tourist destinations and left them largely unaffected.
Although hurricane season ends in November, Laprell-Elliott says if people are still hesitant about booking an island vacation travel advisers always have suggestions for low risk options — Barbados is a good example she said, because it lies outside of the hurricane belt and hasn’t been hit since 1955.
She also highly suggests making sure you know how much your insurance will cover if an unexpected disaster strikes before your trip or purchase a premium protection plan at your travel agency which will cover any unexpected incidents.
Ixtapa travel has also not seen a drop in travellers interested in heading to Las Vegas, after it became the site of the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
“We haven’t had any calls to cancel,” said Ixtapa Travel president Barb Crowe. “I think people realize these are isolated incidents.”
Although, if you are able to travel to any of the affected areas in the Caribbean in the next few years, Laprell-Elliott highly suggests it.
“It’s really saddened us to hear of the devastation. A lot of these islands are quite poor to begin with and it was tourism that kept them going and helped them thrive over the years,” she finishes.
“I think it’s important that as soon as these places are back up and running that we start going there again just to help their economy get back up and running. It is still a beautiful part of the world to go to and with some of these islands sometimes these storms bring better sand and better beaches — like we are seeing in the Dominican right now.”
