When will travel recover?

The million-dollar question. The short answer is nobody knows for sure.

Traveling has become an integral part of our lives and especially for travel companies like us the COVID-19 pandemic is a major threat.

In this vacuum of uncertainty where we all know a new tomorrow will come but we have no idea when or what it will look like for each of us, we were brainstorming how traveling might look like in the near future.

Boutique instead of all-inclusive hotels
Due to the current social distancing measures and related restrictions hotels will not be allowed to host thousands of people. It will force hotels to reduce their number of guests and the popularity of Boutique hotels with smaller numbers of rooms and Air-Bnb and B&Bs will increase. Less people usually means higher quality. Guests will get more value for money with luxurious experiences at a lower cost. Due to their size and set-up these type of accomodation are usually more environmentally friendly. They are the perfect example that low-impact travel and luxury can coexist.

Rethink the way we commute
Flights are barely operating. Airports are shut down. After all, you can avoid the person who is sneezing next to you in a restaurant, but you’re more or less left to fate once you’ve strapped on that seatbelt inside a flying metal canister. The World Health Organization defines contact with an infected person as being seated within two rows of one another. Even with limited passengers, how can you avoid to be in contact with someone in a closed environment where particles are transmitted more easily? While airlines are developing plans to restart their flights, there are other options which carry a lower risk of getting infected. Trains for example. hard on their Rethink the way to commute: flying , unlikely. More particles are transmitted. Train, highly likely. In trains the spread of particles is limited due to lower numbers of passengers and the possibility to open windows and doors. It also has a nice side-effect: it drastically reduces our ecological footprint.

#stayhome
Closed borders beyond Spring will force most of us to make holidays in our home countries. Even though there’s something alluring about the far-away, there’s a lot to be said for spending quality time discovering your home country. We can promise you, here’s so much even within thirty miles of your house that you’ve never seen before. It is also definitely value in experiencing your home country.  You can take this greater comprehension of your own country’s history abroad with you and understand how it compares to that of other parts of the globe. Traveling at home helps you to contextualize your country’s place in the world. Aaaand traveling in your own country can in many ways be as cheap, or cheaper than venturing abroad.

We will travel again after COVID-19 but it will not be the same. It has changed all of our worlds, and not just in the short-term. The queues at immigration will be longer, we will need more than our passports, we will get used to temperature checks and we will learn to appreciate quality over quantity again when traveling abroad.