KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the world of COVID-19, you're taking a risk any time you plan a big trip or book a ticket to a large event.
Fans of Adele learned the singer canceled her entire Las Vegas, Nevada, residency less than 24 hours before. She made the announcement in an emotional video and said COVID-19 was causing too many issues with crew members and delivery delays.
The announcement was a hard pill to swallow for Kansas City, Missouri, single mom and local business, owner Lily Williams.
Williams has been planning the trip to Las Vegas since early December and had spent nearly $2,000 on it between ticket costs, hotel prices and airfare.
"It just feels avoidable, I feel like she could've said something even three days ago, a lot of the hotels said if you gave 72 hours notice then it would be no big deal to cancel," Williams said.
Williams and her friend she was planning on going with are currently trying to figure out if they can get refunds on tickets, hotels and airfare.
Justine Sjurseth, vacation division director for Acendas Travel, said the situation is one travel advisers are seeing a lot of right now.
Between airline and event cancellations and ever-changing restrictions and testing policies, the travel industry is a complex world right now.
"There are a lot more things we are juggling as travel advisers now then we had to in the past," Sjurseth said.
Sjurseth highly recommends travelers try to be as flexible as possible when planning trips and getting cancel for any reason travel insurance.
"Most travel insurance companies had a clause written in most of their policies that exempted them from having to pay out COVID claims because it's a global pandemic and that was a little exception in the fine print," Sjurseth said.
Williams said in hindsight, she should have gotten travel insurance, but she never imagined something like this would happen.
"It's not something that I'm going to lose sleep about or anything like that, there are far worse problems in the world, but it's disappointing to go through all the planning and spend the money to do something, take a break as a mom to do some thing big like that and then for it to get canceled so close to it," Williams said.
While she won't be jamming out to Adele in Las Vegas this weekend, she's keeping a sense of humor.
"I guess I'll enjoy restaurant week in Kansas City haha," Williams said.
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