The Changing World of Travel. And of Everything Else …

I thought about how I should refer to traveling during the times we live in now. Lots of people I know say “traveling post-pandemic”, but is it truly “post-pandemic” when the daily Covid numbers are doubling from week to week in every state, and worse around the globe? Maybe “post-vaccine” would be more correct.

We finally came out of our shells, fully vaccinated but still cautious, and dared out to travel overnight twice in the past month or so. We stayed at a hotel in Hickory, NC for a night and then we rented an Airbnb cabin for several days over the July 4^th weekend. We tried to avoid busy, crowded cities. Our cabin was virtually in the middle of nowhere, in the small town of Bakersville, NC (population 466), on a mountain slope surrounded by woods which was only accessible by a one-mile, one-lane forest road so steep we would not dare walk on for fear of spraining something. As far as we know, the deer, and bunnies, and many birds we had for companions up there could not share Covid. We felt safe.

I have loved to travel, as many of you know, but I have found even in these two short trips than I am a bit out of practice. Or maybe there is a combination between me being out of practice and the world having changed. Irrelevant. I felt rusty.

Having thought about traveling lately and actually doing it a little bit, I find that the world of travel has changed since merely a year and a half ago, before it all started. There are things I have learned to look for and research that were inexistent before. Things that I do differently. And there are changes in the world of travel and hospitality that might never be reversed. Some of these things I have observed so far  I thought worth jotting down:

• When you’re looking for places to stay now, hotels and other services (like Airbnb or VRBO) will advertise about their cleaning procedures and methods on their booking sites with every chance they get. Before, they either didn’t, or it was so much expected that I never looked for that information. Now, I hardly click “Check rates” or “Book now” if I don’t see their standards listed – but very few sites are missing this information anymore.
  You’ll find sites that tout “committed to cleanliness”, “our deep cleaning procedures are in place for your safety”, “staff is trained on safe food preparation and service practices and are required to wear masks,” again, “for your safety,” they “clean every surface with approved cleaners after every use” - which could be reassuring. But my question is: should these have been standards to begin with? Are these truly any different, any more “in depth” than what you would normally expect hotels and guest houses to practice, pandemic times or not?! And the harder puzzle to crack: how does one know what’s truly “safer” and what is just an advertising gimmick or PR contrivance because they know this is what people look for now?
  We have found that the bartenders don’t wear gloves like advertised in the pictures on the hotel site, nor masks, and that the Airbnb home very clearly does not clean the covers in the bedroom; they clean just the sheets, for example.
• Some hotels also advertise keyless entry and online check-in and checkout for their rooms. We did check in from our phone but our keyless app did not work. Our phone just refused to pair with the door of the hotel room. We had to ask for a key card, which is what we used before Covid. I remember when we were moving from human bank tellers to an ATM (from human to a machine touch), and now we’re even moving away from a machine “touch” to “touchless.” The world has the ability to handle “touchless” services but the pace is still a little slow.
• I find myself looking for hotels that “do not share ducts”. I look for places that have good ventilation or rooms that don’t share ducts so that air won’t travel from room to room. I spend the least amount of time in the hotel lobby’s area (always masked) and only sit on the outdoor patio if I order a drink, for instance, as opposed to the bar area or at an indoor table. This was not a consideration before. I look more and more for individual homes and cabins rather than a hotel because having a whole house to ourselves ensures we won’t breathe anyone else’s air.
• Another new thing to consider now before you go elsewhere is: do I need to bring my vaccine card with me? Is anything I am doing going to require proof of vaccination or proof of a negative test result? One more ID to bring along. We’re flirting with the idea of international travel next; the question there is: where can I go without having to be in a quarantine for 14 days? If I need proof of a negative test, how long in advance do I need to get it? Where do I get it while I am there? These are new necessities that we are just now learning how to research. With family living in three other countries I admit that I don’t even know all the rules for each country and each airline, but I will learn.
• Maybe you’re less paranoid and fearless than me, but when I travel, should I get stuck with strangers in close quarters (as in boutiques, public bathrooms, or a gondola ride up a mountain, perhaps), I am itching to know whether they are vaccinated or not. I am bothered if they are not masked (I always wear a mask indoors, although vaccinated), and I want to come out and just ask “when was your last dose of the vaccine”? Or “are you fully vaccinated”? I do find that this constant, irrational wondering takes away a lot of the fun, but as irrational things are, there is no controlling it. Or at least not yet. I am hoping that over time, with practice, the obsession will fade. (Easier said than done for a control freak).
• Whether a restaurant had a patio or not was irrelevant to me before, whether traveling or just going out to dinner. Now, not knowing the areas, we had to call and ask who had a patio and whether we could make reservations for it. In the mountains of NC in the middle of nothing the options to dine out are limited as it is. With us being there over the July 4^th weekend when half of the places were closed, our options to find a restaurant were that much slimmer. When a place was open but did not have a patio, we took our food out to go. And that worked OK. We ate it on picnic tables or back at the cabin.
• One sad reality of these times is that the restaurant and hospitality industries are truly, truly hurting. Not just in that their customer numbers are not what they used to be, but in that they have extremely limited staff. Virtually every place we went to on our vacation (hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues) had a “Hiring now. All positions.” sign at the door. The wait staff that are working are slow because places are painfully understaffed. This is a fact. We walked into a place in Burnsville, NC and we stood at the door to be seated for 15 minutes. The patrons were looking at us funny but the only two waiters (a waiter and a bartender, and no idea who was cooking the food but they were not visible from the dining room) did not so much as make eye contact with us because they were busy taking orders, giving out food and drinks, paying bills. We ended up leaving and finding another restaurant where you had to order the food at the counter yourself – no wait staff although the restaurant had very clearly been a sit-down kind of place. Again, only two people were working here, just taking the orders and bringing food out. No drink refills and we cleaned our own tables. No, I am not sharing this because it was an imposition, I am sharing this because it’s sad to see an industry that we so willingly love to support hurting so much.  If we did get a sit-down restaurant with waiting staff, the service was always accurate but at least twice as long as anywhere else before the pandemic. If you go out there and try it out, my word of advice is: patience.

And the lessons are, of course, a lot more: traveling with hand sanitizer wherever we are is not new to me, as a permanent mechanical valve patient, but now I see that almost everyone carries sanitizer or wipes and actually uses them before touching food. A welcome relief! Picking up a mask before we leave the house is as important as the keys.

I guess there is nothing more compelling, more acute, more immediate, more dire than an international disaster to make the world change. Whether we were ready for it or not, we’ll find new ways to adapt, new ways to not be scared, new ways to live. And travel. I hope.

It’ll never be the same, but human resilience and adaptability will eventually win. Of that I am sure. I think “adaptability” is the key word here: what is now an imposition (remembering masks, wipes, vaccine, negative tests, proper ventilation, etc) will become routine, just like packing a toothbrush was before. But isn’t this how humanity survived and progressed, anyway?  

Happy travels, all!