Spent your quarantine dreaming of roaming the streets of Paris or taking a wine tour through Italy? Yep, us too. It’s time to make that dream a reality.
As of August 2020, the U.S. State Department lifted the nearly five-month-old travel advisory warning Americans against all international travel, citing improved health and safety conditions in some countries. And while a growing number of countries are re-opening their borders to tourism, several countries—including much of Europe—remain off-limits to tourists from the US.
Even with the ban, if you know where you want to go, booking now may be a good idea — assuming your trips is more than a few months out and cancellation penalties are within your risk tolerance.
How should I get there?
Taking a flight can be safe, and, if trends continue, will only be safer as we get further into 2021. We expect many of the cleaning and social distancing precautions that airlines put in place in 2020 to stick around.
Plus, most airlines have decided to extend flexible cancellation policies even for their most basic fares through 2021. Keep in mind, some airlines are already reducing the number of international flights available in 2021. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a flight for you, it just means you might have to route through a different hub city than you expected.
What should I expect when I arrive?
Simply said, some changes. A lot of hotels are enforcing heightened safety protocols. Things like contactless check-in and more rigorous cleaning procedures are all part of the plan to keep you safe and are going to be the new norm (which we’re totally okay with).
If you’ve planned this trip around a specific activity or site, do your research before you go. Moving into 2021 we’ll be dealing with closures, new hours, and required reservations. As long as you have a plan for where you want to go and what you want to do, you can make sure these things don’t affect you. Any time we travel somewhere new, there is always more to-do than we have time on our schedule for anyway!
Our Recommendation
Book, but book with safeguards you can put in place to make sure your vacation goes off without a hitch — or can easily be canceled, if need be, with the least financial loss if things don’t go the way we all hope.