COVID-19 demolished the Spring 2020 travel season, and sadly it's going to derail many of our summer plans as well. Halting travel and tourism as we know it, the virus has forced most of the world into some version of quarantine, leaving us with a lot of questions about the future of travel - When will we travel again? How will travel change? Will we be able to cross international boarders? What precautions will we and our transportation systems need to take to limit the potential spread of the virus.
These are questions I think about almost everyday at this point. My clients who had to cancel trips this spring have asked me, my friends who are anxious to GTFO of their apartments are asking too. We’re all trying to figure out what the “new normal” will mean for travel. Even if people start flying again this summer, the game has changed.
Here's my 3 cents on the topic, so far:
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🚞 Domestic Travel will dominate: Until we have a good global approach to testing, tracking, and treating COVID-19, prepare to spend more time exploring your country of residence. So if you're in the US, start making a list of places you'd like to visit that won't require a passport. State Parks and beachfront locations are a good place to start. Here are a few articles to get the brainstorming going!
🏕 Less hustle and bustle, more disconnect and reflect: I would bet good money on the fact that travelers will gravitate more toward unique, "controlled", retreat-like experiences in the coming months and maybe even years - and I'm sure that's what I'll be planning for myself as well as I ease back into international travel. Think: Small groups of friends or solo travelers experiencing a culture or building a new skill in a beautiful countryside house vs. landing in a major city, checking into a hostel, and overloading your schedule with sightseeing where you could cross paths (and germs) with literally thousands of people. The trips I've started planning this year in this "COVID Normal" are focused on finding unique travel accommodations near a beach or quiet countryside (hello vineyards!), and encouraging my closest friends who have also been maintaining social distancing to join me for a long weekend or week of relaxing and reflecting. I have a hunch that these are the types of trips my clients will be looking for as well as they get back into planning mode - "where can I go to get away, experience a new culture, but also not bump into a bunch of people in the process" is going to be the question of the year.
👮🏻♂️ Say Hello to Airport Security 2.0: For anyone who doesn't remember what travel was like before 9/11, just imagine a world where almost everything you now view as normal, and usually frustrating, about going to the airport didn't exist. It was a pre-TSA experience. You could walk your friends and family members to the gate, you could leave your shoes on, and you didn't have to compress all of your liquids/cosmetics into an itty-bitty ziplock bag. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as they're called in the US, was created as a national security response to the events of 9/11, and other countries had their own transit security focused organizations evolve and expand as well. Just as the global travel experience transformed in 2001 in response to perceived threats, the world is destined for another massive overall catalyzed by this pandemic with a new focus: health security (I'm sure there's a more technical term, but I'll go with this for now). At a minimum, I'm sure we'll see start to see body scanners that also do temperature checks at security, the takeover of contactless check-in/ID checks will be expedited, and maybe we'll even start seeing plastic seat dividers... 😷
We won't truly know what it means to travel regularly in the time of COVID until we all start taking the plunge back in, but until there's a vaccine out there, things will be different and we'll need to adapt because we can't stop traveling forever, right? - who's with me?
xox,
&e
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