Highly recommend not cancelling, but anyone cancelling or postponing and why?

Hi all!
I have been coming back for the last 5 years, and I can not recommend the unique island enough. I completely understand the other forum members love for the island.

If it not too personal, would you let me know whether and for reason some of you are cancelling or postponing this year.
( I am going in December and want to make sure I thought of everything.)
Take care,
Ania

I had to shorten my trip by a few days due to the unavailability of my original villa, and a slightly shorter window of availability for my replacement villa. I also chose to route my travel through Antigua. That's it. I've done this before after Hurricane Luis, and I know what to expect.

We are coming the same amount of time we always come for. We routed thru San Juan (no overnight there) instead of SXM but did that long before the Hurricane.

We made the difficult decision to postpone our trip due to mostly 2 factors

-People on this forum who live on the island saying to stay away. Saying that the rental agencies were putting "rose colored glasses" on the situation and that people should wait to come down.
-Having our airline reschedule our flights for a different day making it very difficult to get to the island. We were nervous about rebooking and only to have those flights cancelled as well. New flight times also made transferring difficult. Transferring through SJU was not financially viable (we would have lost our WinAir ticket purchase and had to pay $2k to for the new flight from SJU to SBH making the total cost about $2,600 for the flight).

There were a few other smaller factors as well, but those were the main two reasons. I was mostly on the fence when people on the forum who live on the island were saying to stay away. The flight just pushed me over the edge.

My trip next month includes stops at some other islands that were not as affected so I figured I would keep my flights, if they were still good, and just expand my time on those other islands if St Barths didn't work out. Some changes to my flights but I have been able to change to something else that worked even better for me. My reservations are still good, so I have a place to stay and I don't really care about amenities. The next step was just watching to see if places were operating and businesses were reopening. I see many that are and that means business owners need revenue and employees need wages/tips. I am more than willing to come and provide at least a small amount of $$$ to help them get back to normal again. If there were reports of no clean water like puerto rico then I would have changed my plans.

I know destruction is sad to see and hard for some people to think about moving on when so many have lost so much. That being said I have seen many storms come through my home state of Florida and destruction is not always an all or nothing thing for a community. The ones that do survive relatively unscathed need income. Insurance covering loss of income isn't always an option and especially for the employees that need wages/tips to pay bills. I also get the flip side as our house had a large tree fall through it during a bad thunderstorm. So while I appreciate the sympathy and help, I also understand that everyone can't just stop their lives. People like to get paid for some reason.

We are coming in early December. We did look into going elsewhere, but nothing was clicking. This would be our 7th trip. We decided that we could hopefully be helpful returning to SBH and adding to the recovery by bringing our business to shops, restaurants and to the villa owner. They have been working very hard to get things in shape. We were lucky that the house did not sustain too much damage. We had booked via Tradewind before Irma. A splurge, but what a great experience. We do not do the big hotels or hot spots and are low key.. A few good meals, cooking in and beaches, breezes, rhum, pool, music and naps... if that is possible we will be fine. The pictures and recent reports made us feel that things are progressing well in most areas, but not all areas. Not the easiest of decisions to make, as I am sure all here went through similar thought process'. We have lived through the recovery from Sandy in NJ, and have seen the value of tourism returning.

We discovered St Barths 2 years ago....looking at it afar from Oyster Pond in St Maarten. Every time we planned a boat ride to the island, the rough sea changed our mind. Finally we booked at Le P'tit Morne & we have never looked back. 2 great trips & we were hooked. Last season as we left we decided to wait & reserve later due to work schedules.... then Irma hit. We are glad our January trip didn't get booked & have to deal with Win Air & United refund policies. Regardless we contacted Le P'tit & wanted to send a deposit for 2019. The replied they were not accepting any reservations at this point. We were basically hoping to fill their kitty with some $ to help rebuild... which I hope they do. We are all depressed we don't have a trip on the books but glad the island is in rebuild mode. Should be back early 2019.

Hi Koops,
Maybe, what they meant, was it is more than 1-year out and exceeds their booking time line. When I was there two weeks ago they were fast at it and opening for business.