It's got nothing at all to do with the airline, because you cancelled and accepted a refund. As the hotel charges for no shows it is entirely up to them if they make a gesture of good will, but not sure why they should, because they would end up out of pocket then. It's no different to the ash cloud scenario when many, many holidaymakers found themselves out of pocket for accommodation costs. It was after this that lot's of insurers starting offering cover for natural disasters.
As your travel insurance doesn't cover for them, or trip interruption or whatever each company calls it, they aren't going to pay out.
This is why having the correct insurance cover for your needs is vital.

What good is travel insurance if it doesn't cover delays/losses due to bad weather?
You will notice that officials have been very careful to call this a Superstorm rather than a Hurricane, since 'natural disaster' exclusions include Hurricanes, but not windstorms . Your insurance
should have covered this IMO...

Whether something is a 'hurricane' or not is very specifically defined in meteorology and by the time Sandy made landfall in the US it was no longer a hurricane according to that definition. But if the OP's holiday insurance didn't cover her for 'natural disasters' then it doesn't matter whether it was a 'hurricane' or the 'post-tropical storm' that the US Hurricane Centre had graded it as by the time it made landfall. From the sound of it she wasn't covered for any sort of weather event but it's not clear whether she has confirmed this with her insurance company or not.

My insurance does cover me for delays/cancellations caused by weather as long as they weren't known about at the time the trip was booked and/or the insurance was taken out. So my reading of my insurance is that if I'd booked to go to New York 3 months ago I'd be covered but if I booked to go at the beginning of the week Sandy struck and only took out the insurance at the same time, I probably wouldn't. However, I've never needed to put it to the test and there is still the chance that they would argue that anybody who travels to Cuba during the hurricane season has booked after the risk of delay and cancellation is already known.

SM

It depends entirely on the individual policy as to what they define as a natural disaster, if they call it that. Insurance sometimes still calls them 'acts of god' and that covers " superior forces" that are not man-made, avoidable, preventable, foreseen or anticipated and where nobody can be held responsible - except mother nature or God of course, and were a general exclusion on all policies, up till recent times. The facility exists with more and more companies to add cover for floods, earthquakes, storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides etc. If a policy doesn't cover why should they pay out?

Sunaddict wrote:

It depends entirely on the individual policy as to what they define as a natural disaster, if they call it that. Insurance sometimes still calls them 'acts of god' and that covers " superior forces" that are not man-made, avoidable, preventable, foreseen or anticipated and where nobody can be held responsible - except mother nature or God of course, and were a general exclusion on all policies, up till recent times. The facility exists with more and more companies to add cover for floods, earthquakes, storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides etc. If a policy doesn't cover why should they pay out?

I'm in the US and Insurance companies here can not use the Hurricane/force of nature exclusion on this storm, that's why weather people have been so careful to classify it as a 'superstorm' - so people can claim
for their losses. Sorry if I gave the wrong information, I thought that it would apply to this case too...

emdia43 wrote:

Sunaddict wrote:

It depends entirely on the individual policy as to what they define as a natural disaster, if they call it that. Insurance sometimes still calls them 'acts of god' and that covers " superior forces" that are not man-made, avoidable, preventable, foreseen or anticipated and where nobody can be held responsible - except mother nature or God of course, and were a general exclusion on all policies, up till recent times. The facility exists with more and more companies to add cover for floods, earthquakes, storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides etc. If a policy doesn't cover why should they pay out?

I'm in the US and Insurance companies here can not use the Hurricane/force of nature exclusion on this storm, that's why weather people have been so careful to classify it as a 'superstorm' - so people can claim
for their losses. Sorry if I gave the wrong information, I thought that it would apply to this case too...

No problem. Insurance is a minefield at the best of times, and varies so much from country to country.

We were booked to go to NY two christmas ago when our BA flights were cancelled due to the snow in NY.

Our hotel could have charge us for one nights stay due to their terms and conditions but they never did. But i suppose in that instance the hotel would have been full due to the current guests being snowed in and having to stay extra nights. But by rights the hotel could have charged.