Welcome to Travel Well with Allan Wright!
In this week’s episode, Allan provides predictions and guidelines on what to expect for travel in the coming months. With the transition of the national U.S. government, the vaccine being released, and the pandemic hopefully winding down, we can now start to make tentative travel plans for the somewhat near future.
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Can’t watch the video right now? Here’s the video transcript of Travel Planning for the Near Future:
Hello, my name is Allan Wright. Welcome to the Travel Well with Allan video update. I know everybody’s thinking about travel for the future and wondering when and how and where it will be safe so I thought I’d take the information I’ve gleaned from studying travel during this pandemic over the last half of the year and help out by giving a few predictions and possibly recommendations for you to use for your planning. I’m going to break this up into time periods, starting with this month.
November and next month, December, we have in the United States very high rates of community-spread infection and hospitalization. Death rates are also increasing. Part of the problem is that we are losing steam with fighting the virus. Part of the problem is that we’re doing more indoor activities as the weather gets colder and concerning, of course, to the experts is that coming up we have two big holidays. Because of all those reasons, my recommendation is that you just don’t travel from now through the end of the year.
In January through March, things will probably start to change. We should have a dramatic improvement in our ability to control the virus based on a number of factors. One is just that things are going to get bad and states will take action because of that.
Here’s one example, the Utah Governor – I can quote said, “Laws are put in place to protect all of us. That’s why we have traffic lights, speed limits, and seat belts. And that’s why we now have a mass mandate.” That governor, who is a conservative, realized he had to do something because his hospitals were filling up and he created a mass mandate as well as other restrictions. That’s going to happen throughout the country. That’s going to help as we get into January through March.
In addition, we’re probably gonna start listening more to what our scientists have to say as our administration changes over. Spring weather, which will come pretty early in the South, will help leading to more outdoor time and we might have that roll out of the vaccine that we’re all hoping for.
Keep in mind for January through March that you need to be cautious in your travel plans. Testing will help and what you do when you arrive is as important as traveling itself.
Then for April through June, I think things will start to get better but domestic travel will still predominate in part because foreign countries will still be placing restrictions on Americans going abroad. However, testing will help that. We are going to see more and more opportunities for testing at airports and in advance of flying that allow you to fly overseas. In addition, countries are going to start allowing Americans to come in if you have proof of a vaccine. Nevertheless, for April through June, I think that we’re talking about domestic travel still predominating.
Then in July, things will start to change and of course, all of these months I’m just guessing. It could be different but this is a progression that I think sounds reasonable. In July and onward, international travel will start to resume because of the vaccine, because of the drop in infection rates, because of the better testing available.
We at Zephyr are doing this exact plan. We are not running any tours from now through mid-February. In late February, we have our first tour. It’s a snowshoe tour in Yellowstone. Fantastic. Outdoors but will require our group to be together indoors at times and we are going to require a PCR COVID test negative result on everybody, including the guides attending and participating in that tour. Join us if you’re interested!
In March, we have a tour that’s sea kayaking in Baja, Mexico. We’re considering doing the same thing for that tour. Then we’re going to be running domestic tours primarily through June and then our international tours start in July and onward.
So hopefully that will help you plan your own travels as well. And I wish you safe travels as you do start to travel again.
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