With tropical storm Nolo currently threatening Hawaii, travelers with thousands of dollars already committed to upcoming trips are once again being put in a tough spot. What happens if getting here no longer seems prudent, but the accommodation you’ve paid for is open and waiting for you?
We faced that decision ourselves just last month. Our reporting trip from Kauai to Maui was supposed to begin on a Sunday, but Alaska Airlines canceled our flight late the night before due to Hurricane Lala. Sunday became Monday, and with conditions still uncertain after what had just happened, leaving the next day, if it was even going to happen, still didn’t seem right to us. Monday eventually became Thursday, and we went to Maui.
Then our two Maui accommodation reservations went in completely different directions. Our directly booked Kaanapali hotel worked with us and changed the reservation even though it clearly didn’t have to since we were outside its stated change window. Our Hana vacation rental, on the other hand, held to its cancellation terms, and we ate the entire loss.
The loss we incurred was relatively small compared with the family whose Hawaii vacation rental kept roughly $12,000 while their airline gave them credit. Vrbo returned about $800 in its own booking fee, but the much larger rental payment stayed with the host because Vrbo had not determined that its extraordinary-event protection applied. That story drew a range of comments and a sharp debate over who should bear that kind of loss.
A disrupted trip and an unavailable accommodation aren’t the same thing.
Plenty can go wrong with a Hawaii trip without making the accommodation itself unavailable. Our own experience shows that distinction, and it’s easy to miss until you’re the one losing the money.
Where you booked can make a huge difference. Airbnb and Vrbo have platform-wide policies that can override an individual property’s cancellation terms when a large-scale disruption meets specific requirements, while directly booked hotels and vacation rentals have their own cancellation terms attached to individual reservations. Airbnb specifically excludes non-binding government travel advisories and flight cancellations affecting the guest’s ability to reach the rental. Vrbo likewise decides whether an event qualifies before its extraordinary protection replaces the property’s normal cancellation terms.
That conflict became especially clear following Hurricane Lowell, when Kauai officials advised visitors not to come while the island recovered. Some travelers with prepaid accommodations faced a very different financial reality: their lodging was available, and not coming could mean losing what they’d already paid. The rental itself hadn’t necessarily been affected even though the trip around it clearly had.
Where you book can change who carries the risk.
We book Hawaii accommodations in different ways, including hotels, vacation rentals, Airbnb, Vrbo, and directly with property managers. What we ourselves hadn’t focused on enough was how differently those reservations can behave when circumstances change after the normal cancellation deadline.
The direct-booking agreements we reviewed showed just how far those differences actually go. Some specifically provide no refund when the accommodation remains habitable, but flights are canceled, roads close, utilities are disrupted, or beaches and parks become inaccessible. Others give the property manager discretion to determine whether an accommodation is actually unusable, offer different dates, or substitute another property.
Our experiences also don’t suggest hotels are more flexible than vacation rentals or vice versa. Our directly booked hotel worked with us while our vacation rental held to its cancellation terms. Another hotel, rental, or rate could easily have produced the opposite result.
The contract isn’t always the final answer.
The response to our original $12,000 article showed another part of this that no comparison of written policies captures. Some owners choose to refund money even when they aren’t required to.
One Hawaii Island vacation-rental owner told us that when his guests canceled during the same event involved in that earlier story, he instructed his management company to refund them in full. Another owner argued that guests can insure against cancellation while an owner can’t insure against a traveler changing plans after the property has been taken off the market. A third reader came back to the agreement itself: both sides knew the cancellation terms when the reservation was made.
We still compare the property and price wherever we’re booking, but now we’d also look more closely at what happens after the normal refund deadline. A cheaper rate can now look very different when one reservation offers more subsequent flexibility than another.
If your Hawaii accommodation is open and waiting for you, but circumstances outside your control make taking the trip unreasonable, exactly who should take the loss? You because the property is available and you agreed to the cancellation terms, or the owner because you reasonably can’t use what you paid for? And if this has happened to you in Hawaii, we’d especially like to hear how it turned out.
Photo Credit: © Beat of Hawaii.
By Rob and Jeff, Beat of Hawaii.
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Same travelers, same circumstances, two completely different outcomes. I don’t know that either business was wrong in your situation, but I would certainly remember which one worked with me the next time I booked.
Government officials telling visitors not to come as happened on Kauai, I think that changes things. I would have a hard time keeping someone’s entire payment while also knowing local officials were asking them to stay away. Maybe a credit toward another stay would be the fairest compromise.
Everyone keeps saying travel insurance, but that isn’t necessarily the answer. We had insurance deny a claim because the reason we decided not to travel wasn’t one of their covered reasons. Buying insurance and having coverage for what actually happened are two very different things although I appreciate the owner/manager hopes to shift the responsibility.
As a vacation rental owner I struggle with this. If I refund someone three days before arrival, there is almost no chance I’m going to replace that reservation. Why should the entire loss shift to me when my unit is open and exactly as promised?
This happened to us on Maui too. The owner was very nice about it but said the condo was available and therefore the cancellation policy applied. I wasn’t happy about losing the money, but I could understand his side too.
My friend and I recently cancelled our Kauai trip because of Hurricane Lowell. The airline gave us travel credits for our non-refundable tickets, the excursions we had reserved and paid in advance gave us full refunds, VRBO refunded its booking fee, but the condo owner would not even consider a refund or rescheduling. We offered to reschedule to stay after the first of the year, and their calendar was clearly wide open beyond late January. We even said that we would pay the price difference because the rental rates were higher. Still no exceptions. At this point I’m not really sure if it was the condo owner who made the decision or the on-island rental agent. Since we’ve been staying at the same complex annually for 25+ years and even used to own the rental unit we had booked, this experience left a bad taste. We will still continue to stay at the same complex in the future because we love it there. However, we never stay at any condo that uses this same rental agent.
The traveler is responsible to get travel insurance! It is your money and time and we all know how costly a trip to Hawaii is. As a former vacation rental owner, I understand why owners refuse to refund. Everyone must read and understand cancelation policies. I also have a 90 year old mother and a 73 year old husband, things can change on a dime these days. I repeat insure your trip!
I have a rental with VRBO. They are currently suspending my account because my customer wanted to cancel due to the pending hurricane.
She couldn’t do it on the VRBO website because she couldn’t find the place to do it, so she emailed me and asked for help.
So they are penalizing me for doing the cancellation and preventing me from income for 7 days…! They will keep the booking fees as well. I am appealing as I still have the email from her requesting the cancelation.
Another customer cancelled and they said because my resort was not damaged, it didn’t qualify for the waiver of fees as well. Even though roads were blocked and power lines down.
I wish I could book direct with them as I did back in the early 2000’s before Expedia bought them!!
They have No Aloha!
I can’t speak for others really. But we had come to Hawaii for 20 years, bought a ‘winter house’ on the Big Island, and ultimately because of the seriously poor health system availability….that was ‘it’… But as I read (we left in 2023) BOH.. I’m surprised that all the friction, money drain, inefficiencies, and plain government dysfunctionalities has not stopped the flood of tourists. I realize the land itself is beautiful, and since we had a house in Waimea, we could enjoy that without so much friction every day…..but at some point, the various difficulties become staggering…. at least for us. The tensions between demographic groups…well, you could ignore that, or at some point, it gets grinding. Obviously people like us are in a small minority, but I wanted to express my view here. With this story: just one more set of potential and real aggravating friction. And, BTW: Food at Kona Airport? A case in point…years and decades go by…..
I think the media over hypes the hurricanes. Especially West Maui. They lump all the islands together on their media reports. The big island and Kauai are areas that get impacted the most.
It has been over 150 years since West Maui experienced one.
If you look at the history, these tropical storms were in August and September.
Direct hits by hurricane-strength storms are extremely rare in West Maui and Maui County overall, though the region occasionally experiences impacts from passing tropical storms and depressions.
Historical Storms Impacting West Maui
August 9, 1871 (The Kohala Cyclone): A estimated Category 3 hurricane struck Maui and the Big Island, causing severe, tornado-like damage. It remains the last known hurricane-intensity system to directly impact the island.
August 1983 (Tropical Depression Raymond): Passed near the islands, bringing heavy weathe
Airbnb offers insurance for a reasonably low cost, which covers events you can’t control. It only covers the accommodation portion of your trip costs (not airline delays or cancellations). The only time you can buy that insurance is at the time of booking, and I advise all of my Hawaii Airbnb guests to opt for the coverage. That insurance also covers claims for damages caused by a guest to a host’s property.