There have been incidents where travel agents have not refunded or even partially refunded guests who were forced to cancel their vacations due to Hurricane Keith. This is because of the "unused portions of the package will not be refunded" clause that travel agents always seem to put on their packages. This is taken by the customer to mean that if they miss a dive or two or if they leave a day early then that portion of the package is non-refundable. Perfectly understandable, of course. BUT! this has been abused by certain travel agents.....if you don't use your package because of a hurricane, it's still non-refundable and you are forced to re-schedule. If you can't (or won't) reschedule, you still lose your money.

Even THAT would be somewhat A BIT understandable. But, what is outrageous is a few cases I have heard of where guests were stranded here during and immediately following the hurricane...the hotels gladly put them up free of charge, (and stated this in writing to the US based travel agent) but the travel agent has refused to refund the hotel's share of the bill to the guests!

It's not like the travel agent was going to lose their commission or anything like that...after all, the hotel only wants to refund their (the hotel's) share of the bill...it's just greed on the part of the travel agent...after all, why make 20% commission when you can make 100%?

If your hotel has said that your stay was free during and immediately after the storm, please contact your travel agent and BUG THE HELL out of them until they give you at least a partial refund. Belize is a friendly place, and we want to keep it that way, at least for our guests!