Overview | Trip Cancellation Details | Itinerary | Budget
Overview
Before I jump into this, I wanted to quickly address the situation we are all going through right now (as of the time I’m writing this post). The entire world is dealing with an unprecedented pandemic that none of us saw coming, and none of us could have anticipated the extent to which this has affected us. COVID-19 has changed not only the travel industry and millions of travel plans, but also changed the economy, the way we interact with people, and our plans for the rest of 2020. I have been blessed to be in a situation where our jobs and life have not been personally touched by the virus yet, but I want to recognize that that isn’t the situation for many other people throughout the world. I am sending my love and prayers to everyone who is struggling.
Prior to travel being restricted due to coronavirus, we had planned a trip to Switzerland for late April. We had booked our flights into London Heathrow (LHR) back at the end of 2019, and spent many months going back and forth on where we wanted to visit on this trip. This would be Nolan’s second time in Europe, and we went back and forth trying to decide where we wanted to visit on this trip. Originally I had my heart set on going to Prague and Krakow, but I couldn’t make the details of the trip line up, so we decided to pivot to Switzerland, simply because there was an easy flight in and out of Zurich that lined up with our flights into Heathrow. The way I travel often means where I end up on my trip is simply where it is the most affordable and the easiest – and in this case, it was Switzerland! Unfortunately our trip had to be cancelled, so I’ll walk through how all of the refunds went first (in case anyone else is going through this right now), and then dig into our planned itinerary and budget.
Cancellation and refunds
Airfare: My flights in and out of London from Seattle were both completely cancelled by the airline, Delta, about two weeks before we were supposed to leave. Because of this, we were entitled to a full refund. I ended up going on chat and requesting the refund through their website, and was able to get through and get that refund after waiting on hold for about 3 hours. The refunds hit my credit card after about a week. Our flights from London to Zurich were a bit more complicated, because the airline, Swiss, was based in Europe, and was not taking requests for refunds online and only over the phone. Because our flight was also cancelled, we were entitled to refunds as well (we were being offered a credit), so I dug up the US contact number off of their website and was luckily able to get through and get my refund issued quite quickly. The airline did not give me a timeline for the refund to be issued, and I’m still waiting for it to be refunded to my card at this point in time.
Accommodations: Our accommodations were varied across Airbnb, Hotels.com, and Agoda, with everything non-refundable when we booked it. Luckily, both Airbnb and Hotels.com offered easy cancellation with full refunds, and the hotel booked through Agoda reached out to me to let me know I could cancel with a full refund without penalty. I found our hotel reservations in Switzerland were all very accommodating and helpful, and I plan to return to the locations when we go back one day to help support those businesses. In contrast, the hotel we had booked for our last night before heading home was in London, and they were only offering a credit through the end of 2020. Normally this would be okay, but given the current situation we aren’t sure when we will be able to travel again. We reached out to the hotel, and they offered us an extension on the credit through the end of 2021.
Transportation: We had prebooked all of our train transportation within Switzerland ahead of time, so we went online to www.sbb.ch (the official Swiss Transportation website), and were able to request refunds for all of our non-refundable reservations. I never heard back from them, but noticed all of my train tickets were fully refunded onto my credit card. We also had pre-paid for our Heathrow Express Tickets, and we had the option to take a free rebooking. Because we didn’t have sure plans to return, I emailed them and also was given a 12-month credit.
All things considered; we were really lucky to only be out about $225 in cash (all available for future use in credit form). I found almost all hotels, transport, and airlines to be cooperative, especially as time went on.
Itinerary
We had planned to spent just under 1 week in Switzerland, changing cities almost everyday. We planned to fly from London Heathrow to Zurich, and go directly to Lucerne for the night. We would spend a day in Lucerne, and then travel to Interlaken in the afternoon. We had two days planned for Interlaken, with the goal to spend a day in Interlaken and the area around there (including Grimmewald). On the morning of day two in Interlaken, we would take a train into Zermatt to spend the day seeing the Matterhorn. We decided to only do a day trip to Zermatt to save money (I found accommodations in Zermatt to be quite pricey), and to allow us to fit another city into our relatively quick trip! After Zermatt, we would train to Bern for another day, and then spend our last day in Zurich before flying back to London in the evening. We had planned to stay the night in London near Hyde Park so we could get up early before our flight back home to grab breakfast and walk around Hyde Park before grabbing the Heathrow Express from the Paddington station to the airport.
Our transportation was all on the Swiss train, and we chose to not do the Swiss travel pass or the Swiss half fare, as for us it was cheaper to simply book the Super Saver tickets. Swiss train (SBB), has a system where if you pre-book tickets 60 days before you travel, you can access cheaper prices. There are a limited number of these super saver tickets available for each journey, so I went on ahead of time and pre-planned all of my routes so when it hit the 60 day mark for each leg of my journey, I was able to go and buy the super saver tickets. The only exception to this, is we bought a super saver day pass for the day we planned to go to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn, because the number of train rides and transfers would have been more expensive and less flexible than the day pass.
Scroll through my itinerary below:
Budget
For this trip, we had a hard time finding affordable transportation and accommodations, which I expected as Switzerland is known for being pricey. I had anticipated this to be one of the most expensive trips for us, probably on par with Hawaii and London. The total cost for our accommodations and transport (including flights) was $1,960. If this trip were for a solo traveler, I would estimate the cost to be around $1,320 (transportation for only 1 ticket versus 2, and the same hotels).
