Trip Cancelations and How to Deal with the Disappointment

Lots of people are dealing with the loss, the depression, and the frustration of trip cancelations during this quarantine. It’s no joke. As a family, we look forward to these travel opportunities. Trips exploring a new country or city, they’re important to us. Sometimes, we don’t just want them, we really really need them.

We had the trip of a lifetime planned for Spring of 2020. We would start in France, take the kids to Disneyland Paris, and then take the train to London and explore that city for a few days. Everyone was looking forward to it. Each of my kids did the research and picked one thing they wanted to visit. Kiki wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower and Amaya wanted to look into the Harry Potter Studio Tour.

And then COVID hit.

When your travel plans are canceled for reasons beyond your control, it stings. It’s hard to take. Dealing with disappointment isn’t easy and you may not even want to do it. Whether it makes you angry, or sad, dealing with trip cancelations may be very difficult for you to do. If this happens to you, try these little steps to process the disappointment.

Let it Sink

The thing to remember first when you get disappointing news is to stop. Don’t react right away. Your knee jerk reaction may be an overreaction. It may be an inappropriate reaction. Finding out a trip was canceled after you have been looking forward to it and are all ramped up to go is very personal. There are a lot of other factors involved but to you it’s personal. It personally affects you. So you are going to really want to react. Instead, just absorb the news. Let it really sink in. Sit with it. Allow yourself to feel angry and depressed. Be bummed out about it. Don’t jump right into a reactive response whether positive or negative. Even if you want to be proactive, it’s better to just feel the full impact and not brush it aside.

Try to Understand

After you absorb the impact of the bad news of your trip cancelation, take a moment to be objective. Try and understand why the cancelation was necessary. Covid is affecting nearly all Americans travel plans so it’s not a personal slight. Not in all cases, but sometimes, there is a very good reason or even multiple reasons for canceling a trip. Consider that you are better off not going on the trip than if you had gone. even if it’s something you were looking forward to, the cons might outweigh the pros enough that you will start to feel okay about the trip being canceled.

Seize Your Opportunity

Whether you like it or not, you aren’t going on that trip. It isn’t happening. But that doesn’t mean you fall into a dark void for the duration of your travel schedule. You now have an opportunity. You have all this time on your hands and a travel budget. Assuming you spend a whole day on the phone trying to get your refund from the airline, that still gives you at least a few extra days to do something else. Tackle a project that’s been bugging you, or turn your broken plans into an amazing staycation. Find something positive you can actively do to turn the bad news around.

Start Planning Another Trip

One great thing about travel plans is that it’s so fun to create them. Sometimes dreaming about the trip of a lifetime is better than taking one. You can plan your next trip right away and start feeling the effects of getting excited again. Your budget can even be bigger when you roll over the money you had saved up.

How do you deal with the disappointment of a cancelled trip?

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