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Covid Archives - Taste Vacations®

Sydney riding in the snow

Are You Ready to Travel? The Malaise of COVID

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Recently I have found myself in a travel malaise.

I did not plan any travel at all during the first week of January, when my daughter was off school for winter break. We were in the peak of the Omicron variant surge. Instead, we hung out at the house and, frankly, had a great time.

I canceled my participation in a cross-country ski weekend I had planned with a local outdoors group. Granted, we were supposed to get a snowstorm making traffic terrible – but others who were signed up continued as plan while I stayed home.

This past weekend, over President’s Day, I researched flights to Florida for warm weather or to Colorado for a ski weekend. The flights were either super expensive or leaving at terrible times. I opted not to go.

I run a travel company. I traveled to Mexico to run a sea kayaking tour in December. I am scheduled to guide five trips later this year. Yet I have been reluctant to travel and content with that decision. What is going on?

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EU to Discuss Reinstating Travel Restrictions on US Citizens

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The Delta Variant has continued to spread across the country and the globe. The United States’ COVID cases have increased exponentially in the last few weeks, with the majority being those who are unvaccinated.

On the European Union Black List

Yesterday Bloomberg News reported, “The European Union will likely discuss reintroducing travel restrictions on visitors from the U.S. next week amid rising coronavirus case numbers. The U.S. has breached the threshold to be included on the list of non-EU countries that enjoy unrestricted travel into the bloc.”

Though not news we welcome, it is what we expected given our current situation. We certainly believe the EU will make the decision to take the United States off their list of countries that can travel without restrictions to EU countries.

Exception for Those Vaccinated?

Non-vaccinated travelers most likely will not be allowed to enter the EU even with a negative COVID test result. Vaccinated travelers may still be able to enter given they show their proof of vaccination, and perhaps even a negative COVID test result.

However, this decision is still up in the air. The European Union has been urging the US to allow vaccinated travelers into the country, yet the US still bans all non-essential travel. So will the EU allow vaccinated travelers to set a good example – or because their tourism industry desperately needs vaccinated Americans? Or will they reciprocate by banning all Americans. We think it most likely they will allow vaccinated Americans into EU on non-essential travel … but we will know more soon.

COVID Test Required?

I recently traveled to Iceland in June with my husband and a COVID test was required even though we were both vaccinated. It was a very small addition to our entry into the country and did not delay our plans at all. Just after going through customs, we entered another line to get a COVID test. The healthcare workers were quick and efficient. We then rented a car and drove to our hotel to wait for our test results as we ate breakfast in our room and rested from the overnight sleepless flight. We each received a text with our negative COVID results after a few hours and headed out the door to start exploring the beautiful city of Reykjavik. This is one possibility for the EU.

Our best guess at this time is the EU will allow vaccinated Americans into the country for leisure travel, possibly with a COVID test required. Of course, if a ban is reinstated for all US travelers, we would most likely reschedule our planned European tours scheduled for the coming months.  

We will be watching this news closely and will provide an update as soon as we can.  

Please stay safe out there!

The Future of Travel Webinar

The Future of Travel in the time of COVID-19

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As we’ve been making decisions on canceling or postponing tours and creating safety procedures for when tours resume, Taste Vacations’ founder and owner, Allan Wright, dove into a massive amount of research of all things travel and COVID-19 pandemic. The result was a useful compendium of information on travel during the pandemic. We will present this information to any and all travelers in a free webinar:

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