Whither Travel? Part II

What is the future of travel?  Let’s take a look (again).

 

I took two trips recently, in July 2021, a four-day weekend trip to New England, and a two-week trip to Oregon and California.  First long plane ride and rental car, hotels and restaurants.  Still, they were domestic trips; I haven’t left my country (USA) in a year and a half, the longest I’ve stayed home for more than twenty years.

Although it’s just a trip across the country, several logistics reveal changes.  Flights were not cheap, and prices continue to rise.  The airline changed our flight times twice.  The rental car was crazy expensive, due to shortages.  Hotels are expensive as well, even though we’re staying in small towns, not cities.  Airbnb continues to charge a hefty cleaning fee, and hotels may be following suit.

 

I’m writing this at a time (August 2021) when travel is picking up, and parts of the world are opening, but travelers are still wary.  Attendance at outdoor attractions, such as my trips, are remarkably higher and even in national parks, I may expect crowds.  Camping spots are harder to get than hotels, and forget about renting an RV or a camper van; they’re all gone.

Lately, the world has looked more post-pandemic.  Most people were not wearing masks and stores and restaurants and hotels were crowded, but we’re certainly not back to normal, and the travel world has changed.  A year ago, I wrote a post entitled Whither Travel, looking forward into the pandemic.  It’s time to look again.

 

From our trip to California.  Outdoors destinations are now popular.

 

Hotels will change

Expect less contact at the check-in and more touchscreen kiosks, like an airport.  Some larger chains are experimenting with robots to guide you around.  Gone from many hotels are keys, replaced by a key card the kiosk gives you or even digital keys, so you can use your phone to open the door.  Some hotels will do away with the lobby entirely and just send the info to your phone.  Why have a lobby?

I’ve seen many articles, such as this one, on the increased cleanliness of hotel rooms, such as constructing them with more anti-bacterial or autocleaning materials such as titanium dioxide.  In all the hotels we used (six!), our rooms were not serviced during our stay.  A Hampton Inn we stayed at for a single night put stickers all around the room, such as over the TV remote control and even on the outside door, showing they’ve been disinfected before we checked in.  Guests have not been trusting cleaning services, and so now they’re making themselves more visible.  Plenty of single-use Purell wipes packets lay about, for our use.

 

Expect new standards of cleanliness, especially in hotels.  Expect that this will be hell for the hotel staff, and put a lot more chemicals into the environment.  A year ago, Marriott created a “Global Cleanliness Council” having rules such as housekeepers disinfecting their hands every twenty minutes.  Wonder how that has affected the skin on their hands after a year.

The breakfast buffet went away for a while.  It’s back now, but is starting to be replaced by special ordering, delivered to your table or even your room.  The hotel gym is being replaced by delivering equipment, like hand weights or a yoga mat, to your room, where channel 38 on the TV has on-demand yoga classes available.

Expect more digital, rather than personal, interaction with hotels in general in the future.  Expect more touchpads to control the room and request special items, or food.

Expect less service.  You can make your bed yourself, nor not.  Replacing your towels every day is horribly wasteful, and I hope that practice is gone for good.

 

A trail in Oregon.  It’s good to go where there’s no one else around.

 

Service in General

The world in general is grappling with the massive employment shifts caused by the pandemic, and that’s hitting the service industry hard.  Most hotels and restaurants are understaffed, certainly here in the USA, and are having trouble recruiting new people.  The staff they let go last year doesn’t really want to come back to made your bed, as they’ve moved on to other non-service jobs and don’t want to work for the minimum wage with no health insurance (insurance in the USA is tied to your job).

The debate will continue about whether people don’t want to work, or whether employers simply don’t want to pay enough to get workers, but in the short term expect staffing problems and, already, higher prices.

A Ghirardelli chocolate store we visited in California was staffed by two people, utterly unable to cope.  After talking with one of them, he bluntly told me, “No one wants to work retail anymore.”  A wine bar in the same city was run by one person only, doing everything, the whole business.

 

Staffing problems in restaurants, combined with supply line difficulties, means reduced hours and menus.  In Oregon, throughout several towns, we found restaurants that could only open four days a week and closed very early, sometimes by 7:00 p.m.  By 9:00, everything was closed, even fast-food places.  If you don’t plan your dinner, you may go hungry.

In the USA, many restaurants have done away with menus last year, replacing them with QR codes on the tables that pull up the menu on your phone.  I really hate that and hope it goes away, but that system makes it far easier for the restaurant to make changes, such as the prices.  Printed menus acted as stabilizers for dishes and prices; digital ones are a temptation for change.

 

Some restaurants have already made most of the experience digital, with people ordering and paying with their phones, and Restaurant Business Online reports that 75% of restaurants are making plans to go at least to some point along this model.  For independent restaurants, that’s a huge investment, and third-party firms that make or manage the software to do so will thrive, much as the food delivery industry has this past year.  This takes a percentage of the profits away from the restaurants themselves.

Get used to less staff and more DIY for your dining experience, such as getting your own drinks.  Many table service places will change to a more counter-style experience, where you order and pay at the counter and grab your food, and any refills, yourself.  Restaurants can’t afford to pay people to refill your water anymore.

 

My last international trip was to Taiwan, early 2020.  We won’t see crowds like this again soon.

Air travel

Last year, airlines realized they are dependent on the customer, not the other way around.  It would have been a golden age of travel, if anyone was traveling.  Airports were empty and the airlines stopped charging us for every little thing.

That was then.  Airlines have now quickly realized that the days of begging for customers are over.  For many countries, domestic flights, if not international, are returning to pre-pandemic levels.  Ticket prices are up 24.1% from a year ago, as of when I write this (August 2021).  The system isn’t there anymore to support a surge of travel.  Airlines have been slashing flights and laying off or furloughing staff (90,000 and 30,000, respectively, just in the USA), same with the food stands and stores inside the airport, and the security people to check you through.  Everyone is trying to re-hire staff, but this takes time and training, and so many of the staff positions are contractors for things like cleaning services (which have increased) or food and drink supplies which pay low wages and are not attractive.

Airlines here have already stopped blocking out the middle seat, a while ago.  All three flights we took were almost full.  Booze is back in the airplane, but you need to have your credit card already registered to the airline, through their phone app, to buy anything.  Food services are seriously limited; you must order in advance.

 

Everyone I’ve contacted who has travel plans has seen their scheduled flight times change, as airlines are ramping up flight volume and must fit new planes into the schedules.  After you buy, your flight time will probably change, and perhaps the aircraft type and thus your seat.  Do not make flight plans with a specific hourly schedule in mind, such as arriving in time for dinner.  If you have a connection, the layover could grow or shrink by hours.  If you need to change the dates, do it now, before all change fees come back.

Another change problem is the routes, as airlines are shifting to reduce international flights and increase domestic.  Here in the USA, going to Montana is suddenly popular, rather than to Madrid, so an airline’s two daily flights to Madrid is suddenly down to one, so your 5:00 p.m. flight could be shifted to the 10:00 a.m. flight.

If your airline changes the time by more than a few hours, it should, via its website, let you change to another of its flights without any fee, or cancel with a full refund.  But don’t cancel unless you’re really abandoning the trip, as you may not get any better times or prices.

 

 

Where to go?

When I told a friend I was going to Oregon, she remarked, “Oregon?  That doesn’t sound like a Tom trip.”  She’s right; Oregon was picked just to get someplace away and not near too many other people.  Plus, we had never been there and it’s the west coast of the USA, and we live on the east coast.  It was an outdoorsy, nature trip.  Some international travel is open, and may wildly open even just next month, but when we planned this trip, that was anything but likely.

Outdoor domestic destinations, as you’ve no doubt already heard, are very popular in every country.  Tripsmiths, a UK-based travel and media company, reports via this article that 2021 trips for Brits are to places like the Scottish Highlands.  For travelers leaving the country, they report that people are taking their bucket list destinations to new extremes, such as the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Although cruise ships are burning to sail again, they’re running into local restrictions.  People are looking into smaller boats to avoid contact, such as river cruises instead of ocean.  Islands in general are becoming popular, such as the Maldives.

 

The question of whether a destination is open to travelers, and international ones at that, will not go away soon.  Yes, we have a vaccine, but it’s clear now that it will take quite some time for the entire world to get it and as long as a part of the world is not clear, the virus can continue to mutate.  I’m sure we the vaccinated will need at least one booster shot in the future, and places like the UK are already looking at plans to give out boosters to those over 50.

 

By the time I was leaving Taiwan, people were already masking up.

 

Many article definitely state that some travel changes will be permanent, such as this one by one of my favorite targets Christopher Elliot that begins with the line “This is the year that changed travel forever,” but I’m not sure.  Although it feels like a long time, the pandemic is still just a blip in history, and we as a society could easily backslide where we left off.

Business travel will not go back to the way it was.  Companies realize that a Zoom meeting isn’t so bad after all and we don’t need to send Tom to San Francisco to do the training when an all-day Zoom meeting might do.  This is a big deal for everyone, because business travelers were the way the airlines and hotel chains made their profit margins.  Normal people don’t pay for business class; businesses pay for business class, along with a week in the Marriot hotel, complete with lounge access.  (I’d gotten that as well in my own job, and damn I miss it.)  The business classes were subsidizing our travel, and that means airline and hotel prices will rise for us hoi polloi.

Last-minute travel planning is tricky, for now.  You’ll never get a rental car or a good place to stay last-minute, and the airfare will be killer.  Several months advance planning, at a minimum, is needed.  I have a good friend who is reserving hotel place in Lisbon for next summer, a year in advance, because they’re filling up now.

 

 

So What?

Society will rethink the concept of the vaccine card, now easily forged.  We may move to a digital health passport model showing vaccines, boosters, and negative test histories, and contact tracing could become common for international trips.  Countries could start to require medical or travel insurance proof before admitting international visitors.

I’ve never bought travel insurance in my life; it just was never in my budget.  But for my first international trip after the pandemic (yet to be planned), I probably will.  For whatever country I choose (months in advance now), conditions could easily change in a few weeks.

 

Last year, most people thought we’re going to get a vaccine in 2021 and then the pandemic will be over.  We’re seeing now that the pandemic effects will last a few more years, at minimum, and some places won’t open for a while.  Several countries that could easily afford vaccines are still struggling as I write this, such as Japan for logistical reasons and Taiwan for political reasons.

A year ago, Condé Nast Traveler magazine declared, about mass transit, “one thing’s for sure: masks are here to stay.”   No, not in the USA.  I live in Washington DC, where they are still normal inside stores, but they are going away.  The farther you get outside the cities here, the less masks.

Expect temperature checks, especially in airports upon arrival, but even in hotel lobbies.  Expect the tables in restaurants and furniture in hotel lobbies (if they remain) to be spaced out.  Expect new methods in tourist attractions to control the flow of people, and tighter limits.

 

 

A travel show in Washington, DC, from a few years ago.  Wonder when these will come back.

 

I took time off this past year from writing anything on this blog.  There was no point in writing “Ten reasons to visit Slovenia this year” when you can’t visit Slovenia this year.  Some writers retooled their blog to be about stay-at-home parenting or more lifestyle-oriented but that’s so very not me.

Last month, I posted my first story in a year, about how every city in the world seems to have the nickname “The Paris of the East”, and I’ll probably do more stories like that for a time, more general topics about the world instead of location-specific.  It’s a good chance to gripe about some pet peeves, like that Paris nickname or the way every article about staying safe while traveling says “use common sense”, as if that means anything.

To sum, travel in the near future is likely to be:

More expensive

More hassle

Less availability

Not predictable

This will affect transportation, lodging, dining, and attractions.  The museum may be closed, the castle understaffed, the restaurant unable to get supplies, and the park underfunded and overcrowded.  The crowds will come back, but the structures to take care of them are not up to the job.  The pandemic hasn’t finished with us quite yet.

 

 

Read “Whither Travel Part 1”, written a year ago, here.

(and yes, perhaps I will write a “Part 3” later.  Things ain’t the way they used to be.)