My assumption is that will end when the mask mandate does (hopefully, as I have a trip to Europe the last week of April).
And BTW it’s not a PCR test (that was/is Canada). A rapid test with certificate is fine for the US.
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H and I are not afraid of getting covid while traveling but are afraid of getting trapped somewhere by a surprise positive or being prevented from traveling as we are getting ready to leave. We won’t be traveling anywhere that a test is required either to go or to come back.
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That’s how I feel. My husband really wanted to go ahead and reschedule our 2020 European trip this summer, but I’m not comfortable doing that yet.
Thanks for the clarification–tough to keep track who requires what!! We have a Canadian trip in June (3rd reschedule) and a trip to Scotland in the fall (booked last June when life was looking good pre-delta variant). I just find that test requirement so onerous, given vaccinations and boosters.
Hope you’re right RE: drop of mandates in April!!
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Help - late breaking question. (This is what happens when you haven’t traveled bc of COVID…).
We are in a condo for a week, and we are paying a hefty cleaning fee. Are we supposed to tip the person also? Neither husband or I remember.
Thanks in advance.
We did. $10 a day vs our usual $10 p/p per day - figured they’re likely not getting “all” the cleaning fee we paid, but we paid a lot in that fee.
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if you are paying a hefty cleaning fee then I would not pay a tip…
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We just left $10 at the end of our month long stay. There was no cleaning inside during that month - just towel and sheet exchanges, but we made our own beds, etc. We also had the dishes washed ourselves before we left.
With that situation I assumed it was only moderately different than if we left a motel room. I tend to tip $5 for a one night (one cleaning) motel room, so $10 for the condo - with the cleaning fee included. I doubt the workers get all of the cleaning fee, but even if they do, I don’t mind adding $10 to it.
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CC travel gurus, what do you think about Vienna in mid-April? Back in June 2021, we booked round trip flights on BA to Vienna for mid-April. Got a great rate and just gambled on the hope that Covid conditions would permit us to take the trip. We’ve looked at the fare restrictions and we have until 3 weeks prior (late March) to cancel. Looks like we would at least get vouchers from BA and possibly a refund. Covid cases are rising in Austria and of course we did not anticipate a war in Europe. We’ll probably wait until the deadline to cancel to decide, but I’m curious what this group thinks. Would you go or cancel?
When we were in Hawaii, they charge over $300 for cleaning for a week, they never brought fresh towels or anything to the condo, we were ok with it. We left no tips.
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I’m catching up on some older news e-mails and see that neither Hyatt nor Marriott had pulled out of Russia as of two days ago. If I don’t see anything changed as I continue to catch up, I have some reservations I plan on changing. No hotel is worth helping a rogue idiot take human lives to me. There are others to choose from (which I’ll also make sure aren’t in the same “who cares” league).
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Not true for Marriott.
Do you have a link? I’m searching and all I’ve found so far is they have paused (new) development, but haven’t closed operational hotels. The development “pause” came one day ago, but is firewalled, so I can’t read that one fully.
I see nothing that says they’ve closed their (28) currently operating hotels.
I can still make reservations to stay at Marriot in Moscow for tonight if I wanted to. Sure seems to me to be true.
https://www.marriott.com/reservation/rateListMenu.mi?defaultTab=standard
They sent an email to Ambassador Elites the other day. They closed down corporate office in Moscow and earmarked 1M for associate relief fund. They have paused opening of upcoming hotels and all future hotel development and investment in Russia. Also working with various humanitarian organizations to help . Keep in mind Marriott doesn’t own a good number of it’s properties.
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Stay someone else!
If they’re still taking reservations from their main reservation system, that, quite honestly, is enough for me to change my upcoming plans which I’m about to do next, but only as I check out other places too. I may just switch to an AirBnB with all they’ve tried to do, but often for short stays they aren’t the best option due to fees. It will all depend upon what I see, but higher cost to not support anyone/anything supporting Russia at the moment is a small amount and well worth it to us.
They (Marriot) were the last to close corporate offices too.
Well, we’re not actually going to Russia, of course. I just figured that was the best way to know what was going on rather than trying to sift through more news stories.
Taking the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow, which topped our IRL “go to” list once Covid had passed enough, has now fallen off the list too. We’re bummed because we would have done it last year if Covid hadn’t been around, but there are other places to go on this planet.
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I highly doubt that you can complete that reservation because neither Visa nor any other credit card will work in Russia. You can look at availability but that is pretty much it.
It is not easy to wind down a business (sadly, been there with a couple of biotechs that fizzled). You can’t just shut everything haphazardly in a couple of hours, put a lock on the doors, and leave. While it could be very easy to pull the plug on virtual operations like YouTube or Disney Plus with a software fix, it is not so easy when you have physical operations. There is a lot of “freedom fries” stuff going on right now. I would not blindly believe those Yahoo articles and Facebook posts screaming how evil Marriott is. It is a fact that someone can benefit on the short side when stocks go down…
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Marriott and Hyatt are just hotel management companies. If they pull out from Russia, all it does is the removal of the hotels from their reservation systems. The hotel owners will likely reflag their hotels under different management companies. Besides, nobody is going to Moscow or anywhere else in Russia right now. It will take an extraordinary effort for anyone to even get there. Russians abroad can’t even get home.
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