The owners of Great Bike Tours thought long and hard about each and every decision to cancel our trips because of COVID-19. In each case we held out for as long as we could, but in the end, cancellation seemed to be the only sensible option.
To be sure we were making the right decision (to cancel all our trips), we even did a dry-run of one of our bike tours in New England – we slept in the hotels, ate at the restaurants, and visited some tourist sites (although many were closed because of COVID) – and the experience did not live up to our normal high standards of excellence. The hotels, restaurants, etc. were scrambling to appear normal, but the experience was anything but. The hotels and restaurants were short-staffed, and we felt uneasy being in such close proximity to strangers, many of whom were not wearing masks (or did not care to wear them properly). As hard as we tried, it was very difficult to feel relaxed while vacationing during a pandemic, and we missed the easy-flowing camaraderie from the “old days.”
Secondly, there was also the issue of quarantines. In an attempt to keep the COVID numbers low, many states have very strict rules that require you to quarantine for 14 days prior to starting your bike tour with us. And quite often this meant quarantining for 14 days after you had arrived in the state (and before the bike tour). Clearly this situation was not tenable – we couldn’t expect all our guests to quarantine, and as a company, we felt the moral thing to do was to cancel all of our trips, rather than encouraging folks to travel across state lines to join our tours.
We refunded everyone in full, no questions asked.
Please keep yourselves safe, and we look forward to traveling with you later next year.
Sincerely,
Jessica Lacroix, Simon Burrows, and all the Great Bike Tour family
March 19, 2020 – Great Bike Tours cancelled all their spring tours, including:
- Georgia’s Golden Isles
- South Carolina Bike & Boat Tour
- Rhode Island Bike & Boat Tour
August 5, 2020 – Great Bike Tours cancelled all their fall tours, including:
- New York’s Adirondacks
- Nantucket & Martha’s Vineyard
- New Hampshire Bike Tour
- Vermont Fall Foliage
- Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg
September 23, 2020 – Great Bike Tours cancelled some warm-winter tours, including:
- New Zealand Bike Tours (scheduled for February and March 2021)
November 6, 2020 – Great Bike Tours cancelled more warm-winter bike tours, including:
- Florida Keys Bike Tours (scheduled for January 2021)