Hawaii trip disrupted? Here's what to do

Well, good morning. One of our big stories has been keeping an eye on Hawaii possibility of Hurricane Lala. Let's go ahead and play it out and see this path and trajectory. Now we are getting closer to it, starting to feel the impacts on the island as he wins about 60 MPH right now. Now this storm will actually intensify as it moves past the islands and back out into the water. Why it's going to get an energy resurgence when it's over the pacific once again, and those very warm waters will help pick up those winds probably to closer about 80 MPH at the tail end of the weekend and the start of the work week. But right now we still have our hurricane warning out for the big island, a little bit of Maui and we have our tropical storm warning. We start to make the way into the rest of the smaller islands. One of the big factors with this system is going to be rain, whether that comes in as hurricane or tropical storm with the potential for the max to be at about two ft. And these are more kind of conservative efforts here. So we don't need a full hurricane in order to have flash flooding, coastal surge and many issues that could be impacting people. Let's talk about our weather a little bit closer to home. As we see, we've been dealing with our own moisture in the morning, a little bit of a drizzle as folks were headed out. That's going to repeat itself on saturday and sunday and even carry over into the start of the work week. Some significant cloud coverage here as well as we'll see only more sunshine inland going to Giants game tonight. Want to be mindful that about first pitch. We've got some peak wind gusts about 20 MPH. So lots of layers please. Ultimately, take a look at the temperatures. We've got the sixties along the coastline here, 64 in san Francisco, low seventies, peninsula to East Bay, top temperature 80 and any off, but still a little bit of cloud coverage. Taking a look at the five day forecast, we can see that the cloud coverage is going to be consistent and we have the temperatures bumping up and down a little bit warmer this weekend, a cool start to the work week. But let's get it over now to Allie to continue this conversation about what we're expecting in Hawaii. Yeah, Devin, you know, Hawaii, a top destination for Bay Area and all west coast travelers. But as you mentioned, that tropical storm Lala expected to become category one hurricane that could cause a major disruption to a lot of people's plans this weekend. Let's welcome Katie Nastro. She's a travel expert at the travel site going dot com to talk about what travelers flying out of SFO and other airports need to know. Katie, thanks for being here with us this morning. Yeah, thanks so much for having me even admit this sort of trying and questioning time for a lot of travelers, especially those who are looking to take a summer vacation and squeeze it in at the end of august are now encountering the storm. Yeah, let's get right to that. If a flight is canceled because of a tropical storm or hurricane, what recourse do travelers have? What's the first thing they should do? Baseline. We want travelers to remember if your flight is impacted by a significant delay of three hours or more for domestic flight, which traveling to Hawaii, even though it's an island still considered domestic flight, three hours or more, you have the right to a refund if your trip is canceled. So meaning your flight is canceled. It's not moved to a different day, just outrightly canceled for whatever reason. Maybe it's due to whether you again have that right to a refund or a rebooked flight. So in either case, a significant delay or cancellation, you have either of those rights. Unfortunately, not both. You can choose a flight a couple of days later or whatever is available that the airline provides. But you can't also get a refund for that value of the ticket if you decide you do in fact want to fly. So if in the next 24 hours, some people who are planning to go to Hawaii get that notice of a cancellation, what's the first thing they do? Should they call their airline or do it online? And how challenging is it to go about this process of either rebooking or getting a refund? You know, most of the time you're going to actually receive the cancellation notification via push if you have the airline app, which I would highly recommend downloading, even if you fly once or twice a year. That's really going to be your source of truth and it's going to make it easier to reaccommodate yourself or rebook yourself. So a lot of the times when you're in the app and you get that notification, the airline will sometimes rebook you already and you can actually say yes to that new rebooking or it will provide other options that you can then take advantage of. In this scenario, however, we want travelers to understand that there's only so many flights to specific destinations in the Hawaiian Islands, as well as your inter-island flights are most likely going to be impacted first and have already been, so you should be seeing those notifications come in. And I would take it a step further. If you are still trying to plan to get to Hawaii during this time frame, call your accommodation if you're traveling to a major hotel chain and see if they can reaccommodate your dates to be able to still get there, but maybe shifting and then aligning with that new flight that you've now rebooked yourself on. Right, I was going to ask about that next. We talked about what to do if your flight is interrupted or canceled. What about your resort or your hotel? Are travelers guaranteed a refund if you have to cancel or does it depend on the fine print? Really depends on the fine print and it really depends on where you're booking through. If you're booking directly with a hotel or vacation package company, you have some more leeway and you want to make sure that you understand what type of room rate you booked. Did you book a refundable room rate? That can allow for refunds in certain scenarios, but when you book with a third party, say an online travel agency, like one of the big names and Expedia booking, etc, etc, that's really where the hotel or the resort is going to default to whatever that third party's cancellation policies are and they typically are pretty restrictive, especially if you've got a really discounted rate. So we want you to understand that you're likely not going to have a lot of options when you book with a third party. However, I have successfully in the past, because of a canceled flight, been able to shift my dates with working with the hotel directly and then having to work with that OTA that it booked through. It just does take some legwork, but however, it comes down to that case-by-case basis in certain situations like we are now finding ourselves in. Really quick, because we only have a few seconds left, do you recommend people get travel insurance? Many people don't because most of the time it's not needed. First and foremost, understand the ways you're protected, whether that's through FAA regulations or DOT regulations, but also your refundability through your hotel rate and or through your credit card, which has a lot of protections built in. But with travel insurance, if you have a multi-part trip and it is during a season where storms are likely, it is worth considering. Alright, depends on the circumstances. Katie Nastro, travel expert at going.com, thank you for joining us and thanks for that advice. It's good to remember. Thanks so much.