By now, everybody knows and has noticed that the pandemic has really changed our entire way of life. While it may not be in the forefront of some of our minds it still has a constant position in the world, and especially in how the world operates. Things like travel, entertainment, and more have all been altered from this sickness and how it changed our way of living. What will this mean for the future? Let’s talk a little about how the pandemic is impacting travel.
In the initial hit of the sickness that caused our shutdowns and pandemic panic, travel was quickly shut down entirely. Many countries lost the entirety of their tourism industry income for the moment while reeling from sickness, and while COVID continued to spread this stayed strict.
Soon, business travel and specific purposes of travel were allowed with a lot of heavy restrictions to keep businesses from losing too much profit. Most leisurely travel was still not allowed in multiple countries because it was too much of a risk of spreading sickness just for leisure time.
But as time moved forward, the vaccines became more prevalent in many countries as well as better testing, quarantine, and general sickness guidelines that helped combat case numbers and severe cases of COVID.
This meant more countries started to slowly reopen their borders that had closed, and those that hadn’t were able to make specific guidelines for travelers to follow such as vaccine or testing requirements and easy ways to submit those requirements before leaving your country.
Now, it is much easier to get out and about to explore the world. Many countries still have some levels of restrictions such as quarantine upon arrival, testing before leaving or entering another country, or other health guidelines but they seem to be much less strict than before.
And some countries are entirely opening their borders to continue travel as it used to be before the pandemic because of how much of a handle they have on case numbers and pandemic safety. But it really depends on where you want to go.
You’ll still have to check in depth resources on a country of choice before booking your trip for the foreseeable future so that you know if there are any rules and requirements in place and can prepare accordingly. But many countries are starting to recover their travel and tourism.
This means that places that rely heavily on tourism for their economic standing may be able to find some recovery, and that more people are able to get back to exploratory traveling for learning and leisure. It will still likely be much less than before for quite some time.
Exploration and travel is a major part of many individual’s lives, but more importantly it’s a large portion of much of the world’s economics since tourism is a massive industry that impacts many countries. Seeing how this will shift and change as we continue forward through the pandemic and its impact is not only interesting but also important to know how our countries may be impacted economically in the future which could impact our personal lives.