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Essence of Japan: When will the November tours be cancelled?
We are booked on the Essence Of Japan trip in early November, 2020, and are anxiously awaiting to hear from Tauck regarding the cancellation of this tour. As others have posted, we would hope Tauck will contact us soon. Obviously, they know that U.S. citizens cannot enter Japan at the present time and travelers are advised not to travel there or to europe. Why is the cancellation taking so long? We are approaching the date the final payment is due and the 60 day mark before the trip. Please Tauck, contact us soon!
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FYI - I waited up to the day before our final payment would have been due for our Egypt: Jewel of the Nile tour starting October 8th and never received a call from Tauck so I called them (This was just one week ago). I was told they were in the process of calling people, but I was able to do the cancellation and still receive the same benefits as if they had called me. If the same time sequence holds for you, as for me, you may still be 3 weeks away from hearing from Tauck.
Smiling Sam: Thanks for your response. We are getting very frustrated with Tauck. It seems by now they should know that this tour will be cancelled, but their customers are being kept in the dark right up to when the final payment is due.
Unless the final payment is a big deal, there is no rush. You'll get it back (or can apply it to a re-booking) as soon as Tacuk cancels. If you are worried about availability of a date in the future, book it now.
I am not rebooking any tours right now, that will just create another problem. Until we know more about what will happen with Covid and the vaccines, I am not locking into airfare and/or tours. Tauck needs to keep their lines of communication open with their repeat customers regarding cancellations. When I called Tauck today, the rep. I spoke with was only interested in us rebooking this trip for 2021. They should be more concerned about cancelling tours in a timely manner. Unfortunately, I am not convinced we will be able to travel in 2021 yet.
Many cruises, it is indeed very frustrating waiting for official cancellation of tours. Of course they will cancel, they just haven’t gotten to you yet. I’m impressed that Smiling Sam waited it out until the day before his final payment was due.
For the two tours we have had cancelled, we got no pressure to rebook, we just asked for our deposit back and got it and quickly. We have two tours already booked for 2021, they were booked a long long time before there was such a thing as Covid, they are April and July, I’m pretty sure they won’t go, but.... we’ve recently gotten Tauck to book our flights for our April tour just last week. When they cancel, we won’t have the hassle of trying to cancel flights we booked.
We have a tour in September 2021, not with Tauck, also booked a long long time ago.
We were not going to book any more tours, but then, just this week, my husband noticed there were dates for the Singapore Bali tour in September 2022. We were suppose to be going on this tour in a month’s time. We were In Singapore many years ago for about 48 hours on our way to Japan, But we have always wanted to go back, some reasons being, having a Singapore Sling in Raffles and my husband’s dad was stationed there just after the Second World War, making reconnaissance flights over Indonesia, he was a navigator in the Royal Air Force. We also want to visit the famous night time zoo again if we can. The only surprise in booking, was that because there were no prices yet published, we were not allowed to use our Dream Saver account money to pay for the insurance or deposit.
We are lucky that we have been to many places we have always wanted to see, so if we don’t get to others before we are unable to travel any more, that’s Ok. Though not going to Africa again would be hard to take. Until travel is definitely on the cards again for Everyone, we will just see what Tauck has left if tours start selling out. We plan to visit favorites or new cities instead, such as London, Amsterdam, Bruges. Venice, Florence, doing them for maybe a week at our own pace. Oh and Doha,We also would like to go to a few places Tauck do not do tours to.
We had our Essence of Japan scheduled May 2020 cancelled. Pretty obvious that Tauck would cancel. I did the flights myself and received refund in 4 weeks. We rescheduled for May 2021 with Tauck. We have a trip scheduled with another tour company in Nov 2021..Egypt, Nile River Cruise, Israel, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jordan,
Petra, etc. Was a bit afraid to venture in that area, but we decided let’s do it. Of course, at our ages, 76 and 77, we will not be going anywhere until there is a vaccine. We can put off Japan until 2022. It’s an easy trip for us since we live on Maui. We retired to Maui 22 yrs ago from So Ca. We will not leave until a vaccine. We miss our sons, daughters-in-law, and our granddaughters who live in Naples, FL and Costa Mesa, CA. We are safe here. Only gone out to dinner for our birthdays and our 54th wedding anniversary to restaurants that reopened. My husband kite surfs so we go just about every day to the beach so he can kitesurf. I walk and sit in shade and read. No tourists so very quiet. All visitors and returning residents must do a 14-Day Quarantine. My husband kites 60-80 minutes, then we pack up and return home. We talk to a few people at beach for a few minutes before returning home. So many people unemployed and of course the Islands economy depends on tourism. Hotels on beach fenced in and foliage not being taken care of. Homelessness has been a problem. Our Mayor did not have it under control before COVID and now it’s worse no matter how much money they spend. Praying that this CoronaCrazy ends soon.
We finally received the cancellation call from Tauck for the Essence Of Japan Trip in November. Now, we have to cancel additional hotel nights, car rentals, and tours on our own. We can't wait until a safe vaccine is available so we can travel again. We know there are many others on this forum that feel the way we do!