Four times we cancelled
Eighty-four journeys since 2016, and four we called off ourselves. What happened on each, what it cost, and the rule we wrote after the third.
I run the desk, which means I am the person whose phone rings when a journey is not going to happen. In ten years that has been four times. None of them was a traveller’s fault and none of them was, in the strict sense, ours. Here they are anyway.
March 2020, Aysén
The obvious one. The party of five was in Coyhaique when Chile announced it was closing its borders. Camila drove them to Balmaceda through the night and we got all five onto the last two flights north, via Santiago. The journey was nine days short. We refunded the unused days in full, which cost us a little under £40,000 we did not get back from anybody.
February 2021, Snow Country
Japan was closed to visitors. We knew four months out, cancelled cleanly, and moved all eight travellers to 2023. Seven of them came.
September 2022, the Faroes
A deep Atlantic low — the remains of a hurricane — was forecast to cross the islands on the day of arrival. Óli called me on the Tuesday. Flights were likely to go, but the house had no power for two days afterwards and two outings on the list involved cliff paths. We moved the party back a week. Nobody lost money; two people could not make the new dates and were refunded.
August 2024, the Skeleton Coast
The one that changed a rule. A vehicle was written off in a rollover in the park during a different operator’s trip, on a track we use, and the park closed that section for six days while the recovery happened. The closure covered our Torra Bay nights. We could have rerouted inland and run a lesser journey. Rafael and Ndapewa wanted to. I did not, and we cancelled.
What cancelling costs
Every one of these cost the house money, and the 2020 one nearly cost the house. It is also the reason the contingency line exists on every invoice, and the reason we hold reserves equal to one full season’s deposits. That is not exciting. It is what lets me pick up the phone at three in the morning and say yes, we will pay for that, before anyone asks.