Welcome to the seventeenth episode of the Travel Well with Allan Wright!
In this week’s episode, Allan offers up five tips for safe holiday travel. It’s not too early to begin planning for the holiday season. Like everything else, it will look a lot different than normal years due to the pandemic.
Not on our email list already? Subscribe now to get our weekly travel news updates delivered directly to your inbox.
Can’t watch the video right now? Here’s the video transcript of Holiday Travel Planning – Episode 17:
Hi, my name’s Allan Wright. Welcome to the Travel Well with Allan video update. Today I’d like to talk to you about advanced planning for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel periods.
We know that right now travels down significantly about 70% from where it was last year. Interestingly kayak.com which is search engine for travel bookings recently said that searches for domestic flights are down 81% right now from the similar time period last year. So what’s that telling us that clearly people because of the uncertainty out there are not making plans for travel for the holiday period. So I’d like to give you five recommendations based on my travel experience for your upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas travel plans.
Number one – there is no uncertainty. We are not doing well with the pandemic. This is not going to change by November or December. We are not going to get a vaccine that’s going to have any sort of influence by that point in time. The travel world is not going to come up with any revolutionary changes and travel restrictions are not going to change either. So what we have now is what we will have in November and in December.
Number two – consider planning your holiday travel now. You’ll have more time to get creative and think about it. It’ll reduce your stress later when you’re starting to feel the need to make plans. Those are both good reasons. You might have more spaces available plus you might even have some remaining flight credits. And remember that airlines are having very flexible cancellation so if you do book plans now and you have to change you can probably do it.
Number three – don’t forget to prioritize safety. it’s still a number one issue. Don’t go to crowded places. There’s no reason to be doing big family get-togethers with people you haven’t been hanging out with regularly. And this is not the time to inadvertently infect someone who might have a higher risk status than you like your parents or your grandparents. So that’s pretty important.
Number four – get creative. This is a good year to come up with new holiday plans and traditions. Book a cabin in the forest or perhaps on an isolated beach somewhere. Those would be great things to do this holiday season. Do a road trip if the weather’s good. Come up with a new at-home traditions. You can get your family together or your friends and come up with ideas for games or other things that you could do to keep safe but have a fun holiday period without putting yourself at risk.
Number five – go outside! How about a ski vacation? In-state or within driving distance. How about renting a cabin in someplace where you can go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing? Or taking a road trip somewhere where you can stay in hotels that are pretty safe? And you don’t have to get on an airplane and you can maybe drive some interesting place.
Those are all novel ideas that you might not do on a regular year but I think are worth considering this year. So maybe I’ll give you another update later as we get closer but I thought it was worth giving you some thoughts on the upcoming travel season now. Good luck!
Check out the rest of our Travel Well With Allan Wright video series >>
You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel for more updates.
