Travel Planning During Uncertain Times
Travel is picking up, no doubt. But we are navigating a new world where planning for the unpredictable, more than ever, is part of the itinerary. Quandaries are prompting travellers to make adjustments, from being over-packed with snacks to paying bribes, and to dive deep into the dual reservoirs of patience and flexibility. Corporate travel agencies, hotels and other industry operators, building on what worked last year and recalling what failed, have also become wiser to coronavirus-induced obstacles and opportunities, prioritizing outdoor activities, coping with reduced capacity and promoting alternative, less congested retreats.
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Even for seasoned travellers, this year will be a test run. The goalposts keep moving.
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"When you travel to different countries, you have to play by all the rules and regulations," said Mr. de Soto, who is based in Dubai. He tacked on three more nights to his 10-day vacation since the United Arab Emirates would not allow him back into the country without a negative test result.
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On his 14th day, when he again tried to leave Tanzania, he was told he still tested positive. That is unless he handed over $80. Mr. de Soto’s driver spoke up, saying he had overheard the same man charge a Russian $50. A deal for $50 was struck and Mr. de Soto got his negative result.
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Aside from carrying spare cash, Mr. de Soto had another takeaway from travelling during a pandemic: "You need to be very flexible."
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Do the windows open?
Wendy Perrin, who runs a travel-advice website, WendyPerrin.com, has made five round-trip drives during the pandemic from her home in New Jersey to Georgia, to help care for a relative in Atlanta who was in hospice. On the first trip last June, she stopped for gas and shopped in an attached convenience store, an experience that traumatized her.
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"Many of the people inside were not wearing masks even though it was posted on the door," said Ms Perrin, who is scrupulous about wearing one. "People from all over are walking around, breathing on the bin of doughnuts, everybody touching the coffee pot."
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From then on, Ms Perrin would look for restrooms in breezy welcome centres at state lines and eat at outdoor restaurants or drive-throughs. And that didn’t mean being stuck with fast food. She searched online for award-winning cafes and barbecue joints, ordering takeout about 20 minutes in advance so it would be ready to grab.
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Ms Perrin’s husband and two sons sometimes accompanied her, and she researched lodgings with free-standing cabins and external entrances, not communal lobbies where unventilated air could be shared. She found that the windows at chain hotels were often sealed, so she preferred historic inns where the windows open and breakfast might be served in an outdoor garden. Stevenson Ridge, in Spotsylvania, Va., fit the bill, featuring private cottages from the 18th and 19th century that are spread across the wooded property.
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"One of the questions I’d ask is ‘Was somebody in that room last night?’" Ms Perrin said. "I want as little of somebody else’s air as possible." Just in case, she’d leave the door open for a few minutes to air it out. Now vaccinated, she nevertheless continues to try her best to stay out of convenience stores attached to gas stations, calling them "the scariest places on the highway."
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Farmhouse Inn, in California’s Sonoma County wine country, is another property finding itself favourably positioned to weather a pandemic, with ample land and external entrances to guest rooms. Its Michelin-starred restaurant began serving dinner outdoors for the first time in its 20-year history. Nightly complimentary wine tastings also moved outside, and spa services became open-air experiences, the doors to treatment rooms left ajar.
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The practices might continue forever, said Joe Bartolomei, the inn’s co-owner. State mandates closed nonessential hotels for months in 2020 and early 2021, so he is listening to feedback as business rebounds.
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"A great lesson for us has been all about adaptability," Mr Bartolomei said. "I didn’t want to strip away amenities so I had to figure out a way to keep them available." S’mores around the fire pit at night remain a tradition, for instance, but instead of ingredients in glass canisters and communal tongs for guests to finger, the graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows are pre-bagged.
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Bumpy, but not impassable, roads ahead
For Americans and American-owned travel businesses, international travel remains tricky. The U.S. Department of State’s website shows a discouraging picture of advisories from country to country, predominantly "Level 4: Do Not Travel." However, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, recently said that Americans who have received E.U.-approved vaccines will be allowed in its 27 member states this summer.
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The paroxysms of lockdowns and other tightened restrictions around the world presented obstacles to All Roads North, a Venice, Calif.-based travel business specializing in custom-designed trips. The company has detoured from a fairly even split between planning international and domestic routes for their clients to almost 100-percent domestic.
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"We’ve had to change the way we operate in a number of different ways," said Sam Highley, the company’s founder. "People want to avoid major cities and hotels with long corridors, make fewer stops, see the layout for dining at hotels that might impact their ability to social distance, stay in stand-alone cabins, cottages, ranches or private homes out in nature."
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Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons are booked for the summer, Mr Highley said, so he is steering people toward less obvious places in Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. The local guides he partners with have also learned to adjust. Naturalists will meet clients at the trailhead rather than riding together in a vehicle. A fishing guide who used to accompany guests into a shop to get flies and a license now arranges it all in advance to minimize touchpoints.
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Boundless Journeys, a nature-driven travel operator based in Stowe, Vt., shrank group sizes from 16 to 12 and added extra vans, with windows rolled down, to space out passengers. The company has seen more people gravitating toward outdoorsy destinations like Washington State’s San Juan Islands, reached by ferry from Seattle and offering an agenda of hiking, sea kayaking and whale watching.
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Travel Trends That Will Define 2022
"What we learned is we want to make sure all of the pieces or enough of the pieces are functioning in place to allow for a great experience," Matt Holmes, the company’s founder, said. Still, after rescheduling hundreds of clients’ trips last year for this year, he is already seeing people postpone international July trips until the fall, expressing concern about surges in cases around the world and conflicting rules and regulations.
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Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, cautioned that the B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in Britain, is shown to be more easily transmissible as well as affecting younger people. For adults who are vaccinated, he said, "If there was ever a time for a great, romantic vacation, this is it. Leave the kids at home."
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I"I have to manage their expectations," Jemica Archer said of her travel agency clients. "Americans like to rush, but we have to learn to relax."
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Counselling patience
Jemica Archer, who owns a pleasure travel agency (which is actually different to a corporate travel agency like TravelManor) lost almost all of her revenue in 2020 because of cancelled destination weddings and honeymoons. On a personal level, she gave up vacations to Spain and Ghana. Ms Archer is fully vaccinated and leaving soon for the Sun Palace in Cancun, an all-inclusive resort that recently underwent a $40 million overhaul.
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"It’s only operating at 60-percent capacity, so I’m going now while it’s quiet. I like it quiet," she said.
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Most of Ms. Archer’s clients are expressing interest in sandy destinations rather than urban ones. Lately, she has been sending them to Beach House, an all-inclusive, 21-suite resort in Turks and Caicos. Rooms have assigned areas on the beach to curb crowding.
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Patience is a quality she has learned to underscore, erring on the side of over-communicating to prepare people for last-minute changes, including curfews, after clients came back from Jamaica disappointed that they couldn’t visit reggae and dance clubs.
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"I have to manage their expectations," Ms. Archer said. "Americans like to rush, but we have to learn to relax."
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And perhaps slow down as people try to get back up to prepandemic speed. Last year, from mid-March to mid-July, Melissa Goodwin, the founder of Girl Gotta Hike, suspended her woman-oriented day hikes and multiday backpacking trips through New York’s Hudson Valley, Catskills and Adirondacks. When the business restarted, she and other participants wrongly assumed they could pick up where they left off. Instead, participants got winded much sooner going uphill, and sometimes Ms. Goodwin had to shoulder their gear. Fostering a sense of encouragement and camaraderie helped.
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"After spending so long inside," Ms. Goodwin said, "we should aim to have patience with ourselves and each other."
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Article found on https://www.nytimes.com/
