I have just cancelled my trip to London a few days ago. London is my go-to place for whenever I start to miss Malaysian food and English as a first language.  The decision weighed heavily on my mind  for a while. Constant monitoring of the situation and the pros and cons of staying put or going anyway. 

Everything happened very fast in Europe. At first there were just cases here and there. Then Italy had such a spike in the cases that Carnevale was cancelled. Following that Lombardy region was put into lockdown. The cases increased a few fold and in the blink of an eye Europe became the epicenter of the virus spread. 

In Austria , the government taking a page from our neighbour Italy , began preparing for an uncontrollable spread by asking companies to have the employees do home office and closing shops except for groceries, pharmacies and banks.  All out measures to avoid the spread of diseases by social distancing. 

The decision to not go to London was made at the very last moment. 

Among the countries in mainland Europe, the United Kingdom seems to have taken a more relaxed stance in the measures to combat the virus. However this could change very fast and we could be stuck being quarantined in a foreign country. The inability to return to Austria was also very real as countries start to close off borders and flights could be cancelled at a moment’s notice.

We checked our insurance which covered a lot including travel cancellations – however not pandemics which WHO classified corona virus on the 11th of March 2020. Only insurances with “Cancel for any reason” could make any claims. 

I continuously checked our flight status for changes but the flight is still on and luckily a few days ago, EasyJet along with other airlines announced a possibility to change dates or locations with no fees on the changes, so I did. Another flight I have booked was cancelled by the airline and this allowed a full refund. 

I was in contact with the Hotels which we were booked in and asked for options of either refund or a possibility to change the dates even though we bought a non-refundable option. 

The main hotel said no to refunds and changes while the other hotel , Premier Inn showed flexibility by allowing a change in dates. 

In the end, it was a decision based on the general fight against the spread of corona virus. Everyone needs to co-operate and not be spreading the virus at the moment by staying put with little contact with others.