Before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Indonesia has experienced many natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to which it has more than 70 active volcanoes and is part of the Ring of Fire. Despite this fact, in all the years since 2010 that we have been operating in Indonesia, our cancelations due to natural disasters were minimal until, of course, reaching the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
In 2015, the Raung volcano on the island of Java erupted and forest fires broke out in Borneo as well as in Sumatra, creating poor visibility and smoke problems. In 2018, several earthquakes shook different areas of Indonesia, including the tourist destinations Lombok and Sulawesi. During these unfortunate events, we helped our clients in the affected areas reach their next destinations by land and/or sea since some airports were temporarily closed. On the other hand, for those who were traveling to the affected areas but had to cancel, we offered them alternative destinations so that they would not see their vacation paralyzed.
For this reason, and at the request of the Government of Indonesia, clients are required to hire a travel insurance covering at least USD 25,000 (approx. EUR 22,100), which covers cancellation costs due to natural disasters to avoid additional and healthcare expenses.
What can happen in the future?
This is unknown to any human and there is no possibility of foreseeing it. There is always a chance that our clients and all those who visit Indonesia find themselves in a situation where their holidays get disrupted mid-way due to force majeure, be it volcanic eruption, forest fires, or even another pandemic. The chance might be small, but never zero!
What extra expenses can be produced and what role does Come2Indonesia have in such difficult situation?
When an airline cancels a flight due to a volcanic eruption or other force of nature, a ship cancels due to poor sea conditions or any other circumstance beyond our control, additional expenses almost always occur in order to continue the trip one way or another.
In these cases, our clients have a team behind them accustomed to handling situations of this type and solving problems as quickly and as less expensively as possible. We as a travel agency and your contact in Indonesia, will act to help you in reorganizing your trip so that it is as less interrupted as possible (changing hotels, selecting another destination, changing domestic flights, etc.) In these situations, we will not charge for our help and management service, but we do have to charge for all new expenses that may occur such as: booking new hotel nights, (some hotels does not refund for force majeure reasons), new car transfers or new plane tickets.
We will help request all possible refunds for unused services from suppliers, such as hotels and airlines. However, we cannot guarantee at all that those parts that are not used and that have not canceled on their own account, will return the money to us because it will depend on their policies or how they see the situation. For example, a hotel in a destination not affected by the disaster may not give a refund for the reason that it is operational at the time. That is because it is not their responsibility, that the client did not show up, due to their flight being canceled or other reasons beyond the control of the hotel.
If an airline cancels a flight on its own, we will handle the refund process, although these may be in cash or in the form of a travel vouchers, depending on each airline’s policy. In any case, we will always inform you about it.
Our commitment is to make things easier for our clients in case of incidents as we always do. We try to minimize any negative impact in any unforeseen situation that may affect the trip and get all the changes made at the lowest possible cost.