InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has a new policy in place that waives all cancellation fees globally for reservations through April 30, 2020.
I would assume that all prepayments are refunded by individual hotels in case of cancellation of reservations due to the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19).
You can access IHG’s page for coronavirus here.
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Here’s the current policy:
Cancellation policy & booking flexibly
We know that flexibility is what our guests are looking for right now. So, we are waiving cancellation fees for existing and new bookings at all IHG hotels globally for stays between 9 March 2020 and 30 April 2020.
This is in addition to existing cancellation policy measures we have in place, summarised below.
For any stay prior to 9 March 2020, existing measures mean that you will be able to change or cancel a valid booking reservation without financial penalty, if you are travelling to or from:
- Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR and the Taiwan region for any stay between 23 January 2020 and 9 March 2020.
- Italy and South Korea for any stay between 28 February 2020 and 9 March 2020.
For bookings made through a travel agent or online booking platform (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) please contact them directly – we have advised these companies of our cancellation policy and you should refer to their terms and conditions.
For bookings beyond 30 April 2020 we want to remind you of the flexibility already built in to our rates and packages that allow our guests to amend travel plans as necessary. Our Best Flexible Rate allows our guests to change or cancel their reservation one to two days prior to arrival. Changing the date on any reservations through our Best Flexible Rate may result in different pricing, but there is no fee for making changes.
Obviously, if there are government placed travel restrictions in place on or after April 30, 2020, IHG needs to modify their policy above.
Conclusion
This cancellation fee waiver should be industry-standard right now. There are so many entry restrictions in place that it is increasingly difficult for one to travel internationally
