My family expected the usual post-holiday travel blues after spending Christmas and New Year’s on an ultra-luxury Caribbean cruise. What we did not expect was to get stranded the moment we stepped off the ship.
On Saturday morning, we disembarked our ship in Barbados and boarded a prearranged island sightseeing tour that was supposed to drop us back at the airport for our afternoon flights home.
Midway through the tour, our phones began lighting up. News was breaking that military action tied to Venezuela had triggered widespread airspace restrictions across the eastern Caribbean.
By the time our tour ended, our flights back to the US had been canceled. We were on our own, luggage in hand, with no clear path home.
It became clear we’d be stuck for at least a few days, no matter what we were willing to spend
Our flight from the island back to the US was far from the only one suddenly canceled.
Now, we were among thousands of others in the Caribbean whose plans were affected during one of the busiest travel seasons of the year.
My family, including my mom, brother, sister-in-law, and 7-year-old nephew, suddenly needed lodging, food, and a plan on an island alongside hundreds — maybe thousands — of other people in the same boat.
Because we hadn’t booked our airfare through the cruise line, there was little it could do beyond offering general guidance.
And despite constant calls to airlines and online searches, I could not secure five seats on any commercial carrier back to any US gateway for at least seven days.
At one point, I explored chartering a private jet as a theoretical fallback.
One representative quoted me over $70,000 to fly my brother and his family from Barbados to Dallas — even so, there was no aircraft available until at least Tuesday.
Even if we had pursued chartering a private jet, we would’ve missed much of the workweek regardless. That mattered.
I’d already been away from the office for an extended holiday break and ultimately had to cancel other planned PTO and another upcoming trip to compensate for the extra time I’d be spending on this one.
My sister-in-law was able to work remotely, but my brother lost revenue while stranded. My nephew missed school.
At that point, the jet stopped being a real solution and became a signal. When disruptions hit at scale, availability disappears first, and the consequences ripple well beyond travel itself.
Missed shifts, lost income, burned PTO, and disrupted schedules become part of the cost long before anyone actually gets home.
We felt like we were scrambling until we had a return flight
Since going home that weekend was clearly not an option, we needed to find a place to stay the night.
Availability mattered more than comfort, but even that was scarce due to the surge in demand. Several hotels I called said they had nothing available until Monday at the earliest, and when options did appear online, they weren’t cheap.
At one point, I saw single rooms at a high-end hotel listed for about $4,500 each. Paying nearly $9,000 a night for two rooms for our group didn’t feel realistic or appealing, especially given the uncertainty surrounding when we could get home.
Ultimately, I used a consolidator website to find us a small two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath unit at a three-star resort for one night for $600.
My mom and I shared one room with twin beds, and my nephew slept on a couch. It wasn’t ideal and didn’t feel sustainable.
Overnight, though, airspace and schedules stabilized, and our airline re-accommodated us on its next available flight home — seven days later than originally planned.
Still, having a confirmed departure, even one a full week out, changed everything.
Now, we could make deliberate decisions about how to spend our wait time instead of reacting day by day in a crowded hub with limited options.
While waiting for our flight, we decided to seek out a nearby spot with less competition
Unable to return to the US for the better part of a week, we decided to leave Barbados on Sunday.
Staying in the larger hub would’ve meant competing with lots of other stranded travelers for a shrinking inventory at inflated prices. By going to a nearby island, we hoped we could find more available accommodations with more predictable, consistent rates.
The goal was not necessarily to upgrade our trip — it was to regain control.
We ended up spending about $600 a person on round-trip flights to Canouan, a small island in St Vincent and the Grenadines, located roughly 120 miles from Barbados. The cost almost felt reasonable given the alternatives.
Unlike Barbados, where inventory had seemingly vanished overnight, it still had availability across several tiers of hotels.
It made sense given that Canouan is harder to get to and quite small.
There’s no large commercial airport, minimal cruise traffic feeding the island, and far fewer daily flights under normal circumstances. In a mass disruption, that limited visibility worked in its favor.
We found entire homes and villas available that night for less than what I’d seen one room costing at some hotels in Barbados. Though prices were high, they were at least in line with luxury resorts across the Caribbean, not just inflated because of demand.
Canouan is not inexpensive — most meals alone have cost a few hundred dollars — it is simply predictable.
Over the next few days, the scale, calm, and thoughtfulness of the island made an otherwise stressful situation feel not just manageable, but genuinely restorative.
We’re still not home, but I’ve learned some valuable lessons for our next trip
So far, we’ve spent multiple unplanned days in the Caribbean and thousands of dollars navigating cancellations, accommodations, meals, and rebooking costs.
It was far more than we budgeted for a holiday trip, and none of it was planned.
Although travel insurance may offset costs related to flight cancellations, it wasn’t able to solve the core problem of getting us home more quickly. No policy can rebook you onto a flight that does not exist.
Luxury travel does not insulate you when systems fail — and sometimes, the smartest move when you are stranded is not to fight the chaos, but to be flexible.
Ultimately, we were fortunate to have options we could afford. Many travelers were not.
Though we can’t make up for the shifts missed and PTO lost, being willing and able to pivot turned our experience around.
Next time I travel abroad, I’ll build in more buffer days, research alternative regional hubs in advance, and think less about where I’m supposed to be and more about where I could realistically go when plans collapse.
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