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For Those Stressed Out By Covid-19, Hotel Spas Say They Have The Answer. Ultimate Travel Resource Covering Business, Personal, Cruise, Flying, Etc.)

They are rolling out services that purport to cater to customers’ mental health and well-being. Anybody care for a Mindplace Manicure?

Will Campbell, 41, has battled anxiety since he was 7 years old. Now vice president of operations for a digital media company, he says he has found two effective ways to manage his mental health: He meditates regularly, and he carves out plenty of time for pampering and self-care.

www.TheWorldTraveled.com
Elisa Kotin
Travel Concierge
Traveled To 80+ Countries Across All 7 Continents
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So when he heard about the Mindplace Manicure at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort last spring, he was intrigued.

“Any reason to get me to a spa, I’m in,” Mr. Campbell says. “When I read about this one, it sounded super intense, but also like something that was going to benefit me in my mind.”

Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on our mental health. More than 42% of people surveyed by the Census Bureau in December reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, up 11% from 2019.

This has not gone unnoticed by the global hospitality sector, which sees the potential for dollars in all that distress. As travel restarts and Americans return to hotels and resorts, an increasing number of spas are rolling out new features and programs to attend to customers’ mental health and emotional well-being.

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Miraval Resorts & Spas, which has properties in Arizona, Texas and Massachusetts, worked with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to produce videos for its patrons that use soundscapes and scenery to induce relaxation.

The Rose spa at the Joseph hotel in Nashville, Tenn., which opened in August 2020 at the height of the pandemic, offers something called the Kundalini back treatment—in which “ancient marma therapy and warm herbal poultices are massaged into the back of the body, while sound healing and chakra balancing lift away tension.”

Hong Kong-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, for its part, has a new wellness program at its U.S. properties dubbed “Journey to Resilience,” aimed at helping guests put the negative emotions of 2020 behind them for good.

“We’re all forever changed by our experience with Covid, and I think we will never again take our personal health for granted,” says Laura Coburn, director of serenity at the recently opened spa and healing center at the Inns of Aurora, in New York’s Finger Lakes region.

“It’s really hard for some people to give themselves permission to carve out time just for healing, or for feeling their emotions,” says Ms. Coburn, who adds that she is working with a certified mental-health counselor to create a program for guests.

A clinical psychologist helped Carmel Valley Ranch on California’s Monterey Peninsula develop a program using horses in which, the resort’s website promises, prospective guests will “learn methods for growing your awareness and improving your physical and emotional well-being.”

“The program was in some ways absolutely influenced and sped along by the impact of the pandemic,” says Robert G. Magnelli, developer of the Equine Experiences program.

“After the year we’ve all had, filled for many with anxiety, fearfulness, trauma and depression, the experience seems especially fitting for our guests.”

The spa at the Four Seasons in Baltimore, meanwhile, offers “sound healing,” a treatment it describes as helping guests “achieve a restorative, peaceful state.”

At the company’s New York Downtown property, resident healer and hypnotist Nicole Hernandez, who was hired in December, says guests have sought her guidance with issues ranging from lockdown-fueled marriage troubles to phobias with wearing masks.

Some resorts are offering mental-health help not just to their guests, but to their own employees.

Before it rolls out new packaged stays at its so-called Wellbeing Sanctuaries, Singapore-based Banyan Tree, which operates dozens of hotels and spas world-wide, this fall is offering the product to its employees.

“We said, ‘How are we going to deliver well-being for our guests if our associates are not well?’” says Woon Hoe Lee, executive director of well-being.

In addition to “ocean breath meditation,” sleep-enhancing rituals and customized dining menus, Sanctuary Stays offer a 64-point wellness assessment and treatment, heavily focusing on stress management and emotional resilience.

At the Marriott in Orlando, Mr. Campbell found his opportunity to book a Mindplace Manicure in late July. Once there, he says, he sat at a traditional manicure table, wearing sanitized headphones and virtual-reality goggles.

As the technician buffed his nails and trimmed his cuticles, trance-like music filled his ears and synchronized colored lights flashed before his eyes.

“I was fully immersed in the sound and the light. I shut off completely,” Mr. Campbell says. “It was exactly what I needed to step away from my computer, do this immersive experience and come back with a fresh, relaxed take on everything.”

Updated: 8-27-2021

Where Our Readers Went When Travel Opened Back Up—and What It Was Like

Readers say they felt new appreciation for the freedom to be out in the country and world, and to reconnect with friends and family.

After many months of pandemic lockdowns and travel restrictions, where did people choose to go when they were able to start traveling again? Who did they see? And what was it like to be out in the world again?

We asked Journal readers to tell us about their experiences. Here’s a sampling.

Our family of four adapted quite easily to Covid-19, despite 14 months of lockdown. Without the social distractions of school, our two teenage daughters thrived with remote Zoom learning, taking a heavy workload of college and high-school classes.

But Covid-19 spanned two “grueling” Minnesota winters. By the end of a Minnesota winter, every resident’s thoughts dwell on fleeing the state.

In May, we joined a stampede out of Minnesota, following a thunderous herd of friends to Las Vegas and Zion National Park. We rewarded our daughters for their hard work and impressive grades with their own penthouse-like room at the Four Seasons hotel. Every teenage girl wants to be spoiled. Las Vegas and the Four Seasons pampered them to ruin.

Like a spring thaw, the scenic drive to Zion dispelled every thought of harsh winter, leaving just joy. It turned into fairyland magic as we crossed into southern Utah, through meandering strata of rust-colored sandstone formations of the eroded Colorado Plateau.

The park seemed surreal even by Disney/Universal Studio standards. We returned home, happy and willing to endure Covid-19 and another Minnesota winter.

Thomas Fix, Stillwater, Minn.

I had been fully vaccinated since March and my mom was about to get her second Covid-19 shot in late April, so we decided to visit Holland, Mich., for the Tulip Time Festival in early May. We’d thought about visiting for years, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take advantage of our recent vaccinations while also keeping some control by driving.

We hit traffic in Illinois, which felt hilarious. Newly vaccinated, we felt like we were the first humans venturing out into the world again. Clearly, we were not.

We did feel a sense of freedom being able to route our trip as we pleased, stopping at Warren Dunes State Park, grabbing hot dogs and ice cream at a shop outside the entrance before heading in. We had reviewed hotels and Airbnb s and opted for a Holiday Inn Express outside of downtown.

The hotel asked guests to wear masks in common areas, the pool required reserved times, and the breakfast buffet was served to you from behind a counter.

We had done a bit of homework on how the hotel amenities were functioning in the age of Covid, so this all felt extremely normal. It was well-run, we never felt inconvenienced, and always felt very safe.

That feeling of normalcy shifted when we first reached downtown Holland for Tulip Time. As we took in the vast outdoor gardens, unmasked, among a throng of fellow tourists, I felt an overwhelming strangeness. A very typical occurrence just a year before was now an oddity.

However, that strangeness found itself paired with an overwhelming joy. We had made it. We were on the other side. We were safe, we were together, and now the only concern we had was should we eat a normal lunch or dine on ice cream and mochas like delinquents? I think everyone in the crowd felt the same simple contentedness that comes from being out with your community.

In the following days, we visited other parks along Lake Michigan’s eastern shore and moseyed home exactly when we felt like it. Shortly after we began driving, we spotted a roadside sign for a Big Boy restaurant, a chain I knew about, but had never been to.

We quickly steered to the off-ramp, our appetite for adventure still in peak form. At just 10:30 in the morning, we couldn’t help but to order milkshakes in celebration of our discovery. They tasted like hope.

Samantha Longshore, Milwaukee

We traveled from San Francisco to New York. I wanted to see friends in New York City, and I was traveling with people who were going to New York for the first time. But the primary reason was seeing my dad’s sister who is in her 90s and lives upstate.

I arrived too late for my flight to be worried about the airport, but I worried about Covid on the plane, especially when I had to take off my mask to eat or drink.

Once I arrived, it was really thrilling to walk the High Line and explore New York City since this was the first real vacation I had since going to Catalina Island with my girlfriend in March 2020 right before the pandemic. It was a combination of worry and excitement almost the whole trip—the Statue of Liberty and Times Square were great, but both those areas were also very crowded.

One of the highlights of the whole trip was kayaking in Lake George near Silver Bay. It was beautiful and serene and I was far enough away from my cousins in their separate boats that I was able to enjoy it without worrying about the coronavirus. I was content and relaxed.

It was quite a whirlwind trip, but it was great because of the adventures with my girlfriend and her boys and reconnecting with friends and relatives. I do, however, think it was a little risky because of the Delta variant.

John Robinson, Pinole, Calif.

I traveled to an organic mountain farm in Costa Rica near the beach town of Sámara and lived there for a month. I chose it because it was remote (still being safety-minded) and, after 16 months of fear and stress inside the four walls of my apartment, it felt like such a luxury to take joy in the magnificence of nature and fresh air.

The trip exceeded my expectations—apart from the sheer beauty, it was wonderful to be meeting people from around the world again.

My Airbnb hosts were so delightful and taught me so much about the region, and the eponymous owner of the bakery food truck in town, Sweeties by Celia, makes the best chocolate truffle cake! Not to mention I could have awakened to that view and the sounds of howler monkeys every day for the rest of my life.

Emma Baker, Chicago

In late June my youngest son and I took our first trip to Nashville to visit my oldest son and his wife. We flew from LaGuardia Airport. It was jumping and the security line was chaotic, but we navigated the chaos and boarded the plane, which was booked solid and left on time.

The passengers were excited, and you could feel the buzz on the plane. As Nashville now seems to be a party destination city, I could sense that most passengers were ready to “go.”

The majority seemed to be in their 20s and 30s and on their way to long-delayed reunions and of course—what Nashville is known for—bachelorette parties.

The city was clearly open for business, and coming from New York after a very long year, I got the impression that Covid was either officially over or it just never occurred in Nashville.

We attended two music venues and enjoyed the shows, which appeared to be sold out. On Sunday morning I attended Catholic Mass and I was impressed with the number of people in the congregation, not to mention the music, which was knockout! After all it was Nashville!

On our way back, the crowd on the plane was subdued, no doubt a result of the busiest weekend most passengers had experienced in a long time. A young man seated to my left called his dad right before takeoff. I couldn’t help but overhear his conversation.

He thanked his dad for a fabulous weekend, he told him how much he enjoyed his company, how much he had missed him and, most important, how much he loved him.

He also told him how wonderful it was to see him again and how he couldn’t wait to get back together, possibly in New York City. I had those same exact feelings for my son and his wife whom we had just visited.

I sat in my seat and realized how disconnected we had all become over the past year and a half. Disconnected from loved ones, family, friends, colleagues, church, even sports teams. In today’s world we have the most advanced technology at our fingertips: FaceTime, direct messages, instant photos, you name it.

I asked myself, is there anything better than having the ability to board a plane, travel a thousand miles in 2½ hours and to be able to hug someone you haven’t seen in a year and a half or maybe longer? The answer was obvious to me—nope! It was fabulous to “hit the road” again, I knew it would be. Next stop?

Jerry Dolan, Brooklyn, N.Y.

We are just completing a 60-day Western states road trip including Joshua Tree, the Olympic Peninsula, Montana, Colorado and New Mexico. It’s all been outdoor activities, mainly hiking.

Our trip has been fantastic. We skirted the heat and the fires. Bless Mother Nature! It made us feel joyful following our Covid quarantine.

The biggest surprise of getting out on the open road again was simply the potential of the unexpected. Most days something delightful popped up, totally unplanned.

From a parade down Main Street in the tiny town of Afton, Wyo., to the almost frightening geologic rock formations at Dinosaur National Monument, we were uplifted by the people and the beauty of our great nation. Every day thrilled us.

In the Covid era, you are chained to the news cycle. Your big plan each day is simply going out to do basic things. You worry about the smallest stuff.

Once we were traveling, the days were defined differently. Mornings are sunrises, fresh air, excitement about what will happen, suspense over whether we will find the trailhead, anticipation of the vista just over the next rise.

To experience this emotional range and physical hard work is to be unchained. In juxtaposition to the uncertainty and fear we felt from Covid, travel has freed us both mentally and physically.

Jim Hahn and Randy Stone, Scottsdale, Ariz.

We went to Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas in March. It was an amazing trip with my husband and two teenagers. As a physician, I was looking for a warm destination with low Covid numbers as I had been vaccinated but my family had not.

A beach and some private excursions were all we needed. The beaches were like none we had ever been to before—the sand was almost silky and the water was the clearest turquoise.

There isn’t much on the island, no fancy restaurants, but the local food on the beaches was delightful. We ate conch fritters daily. The grocery store had a limited selection of fruits and vegetables so you have to be creative.

We took a 15-minute water-taxi ride to Stocking Island to have lunch at Chat ’N’ Chill. The ceviche conch salad was delicious as were their frozen drinks. We rented a car to explore the island.

The Tropic of Cancer runs through Little Exuma. It is off the beaten path so there was literally no one on the beach. There is a little bar at the entrance with a line marking the Tropic, and it’s a cool photo op. The water was simply pristine and as clear as a swimming pool.

And of course, a visit to the Exumas wouldn’t be complete without swimming with the pigs. It was totally worth it!

Amanda Messina, Rye, N.Y.

Our family just came back from a week in Brazil, where we took our kids to visit their grandparents. Having not seen them in two years, and with one of their grandfathers turning 100 in a few months, we figured now was the best time.

We postponed this trip as much as we could, given the high number of cases in Brazil. But we knew if we did not travel now, then we’d most likely have to wait another year before everyone’s schedules aligned again.

It was a bit daunting, both the prospect of the trip and getting tested 72 hours before each flight. Covid testing in the U.S. went well, with results from a local pharmacy coming in on time, but in Brazil we used a self-administered test which required someone guiding us via video call.

We were in locations with poor internet and at times the wait to join a call was over an hour and a half. Luckily, we realized the option for a video call in Spanish was much faster, and we were quickly able to complete our individual tests.

It also surprised us that in Brazil people seemed to be taking the pandemic much more seriously than in the U.S. Everyone was masked, even outdoors while walking the dog. It seemed a bit excessive, but at least cases seemed to be declining while vaccinations were ramping up.

During the pandemic we could only talk to my dad on the phone. As he is hard of hearing, these conversations don’t last long and are never satisfying. It was just a great feeling to be able to be with him for a few days, to be able to hug, to touch him, and to better communicate without constraints.

It is one thing to tell him that the kids are growing, and another for him to see them personally. It was also fun for the whole family to play dominoes with him. He is very competitive and still has a very sharp mind for the game!

I am hoping the pandemic situation gets better and that we can go back to see him during spring break next year, when he turns 100.

Augusto Morais, College Station, Texas

Given the crowds at the airport and on planes, higher costs, and the uncertainties of arriving where and when scheduled, I opted for a 12-hour drive.

My destination was only special because I visited my husband in Iowa, and we hadn’t seen each other since October 2019. We’ve lived in two different states for years and, until Covid, have always been able to visit several times a year.

It was freeing to travel again, especially by car as it turned out. Leaving on my own schedule (4:30 a.m.), listening to whatever I wanted to (first two Harry Potter books read by Jim Dale), eating what I’d prepared at home, and taking whatever I wanted with me (including a TV set).

In a car you can see where you’re going and you have reserved seating, lots of leg room, and no chance of being bumped from the plane.

Sights along the interstate highways were educational and entertaining. It was fun to speculate that California cars were moving out of the state; that cars from more Eastern or Southern states were moving west.

There were RVs of all sizes—from single-person sleepers to house-size motor homes towing cars, motorcycles, bikes, ATVs. Trucks carrying all kinds of freight, like cattle, mail, food, siding, mysterious loads and my favorites—those shining white blades for industrial windmills that are over 100 feet long.

My car will now be my preferred method of travel, unless I’m going overseas.

Laura Andrews, Littleton, Colo.

We just returned from a week in Rome, traveling with my family and some friends, a group of eight, from age 19 to 52, all of us vaccinated. We found the city fully open with very light crowds.

We wore masks while shopping indoors. Other than that, there was not much talk about the virus. Delta did not seem to be impacting Rome.

Locals were ecstatic about seeing an American family enjoying the Eternal City. Travel was easy. I have been telling all my friends—right now is a great time to visit Italy.

The trip was originally planned for March of last year as a spring break trip for my son James and two friends. It was their senior year in high school. We kept the dream alive and rescheduled as soon as Italy opened up to visitors from the States. The pandemic affected our trip in a way we didn’t anticipate: We felt a stronger sense of common humanity. Traveling to Rome was an opportunity to see the pandemic as a shared experience around the world.

Patrick Cox, Branson, Mo.

My husband and I went to Maine in June. I chose it because Maine had high vaccination rates, and we could do most activities outdoors. It was a great trip! We felt safe with the rules enforced there. Places we visited had a good energy but weren’t too crowded. It felt so good to be back around people and the energy of a busy restaurant, for example, without being scared that they could make me or someone I love sick.

I understood the risks and didn’t feel so much pressure to have everything planned out. I found I could actually enjoy discovery and adventure again without fear.

The trip was exactly what we needed to “forget” about the pandemic and all the anxiety that goes with it. Now we’re back to it, though, with the concern about Delta breakthrough infections.

Carmen Pippenger, Indianapolis

I hadn’t seen my parents in almost two years because of the pandemic. My constant fear had been that I would be the one to transmit the disease to them. “I feel fine, but what if I am asymptomatic?” I would constantly think. So I waited for the promised vaccine, and waited some more until I finally felt safe enough to see them.

The trip was long, from the deserts of Nevada to the woods of Virginia. Here I was, finally fully immune, or so I thought. I should have felt confident, free to embrace them. But each new headline seemed to chirp about a new variant, each worse than the last, and how even the vaccinated could still spread the virus.

So here I was, on a trip where I thought I could finally feel safe and less paranoid, but it was not so. Instead of boarding the return flight with a sense of gratification, I left with fear, thinking I might have exposed them to the virus.

Matthew Horne, Mesquite, Nev.

In June, I took a beach getaway to Maine with my college friend. Our goal was sun, lobster and relaxation. We stayed in a beautiful cottage right on the water, and ate lobster every day! It was not too crowded as it was early in the season. The beach was perfect, and I woke every morning to capture the sunrise. Everyone we met went out of their way to make us welcome.

The trip brought so much pure joy. To be able to celebrate our (well-earned) retirements, finally, and at a favorite location of mine, reuniting and sharing till the wee hours of the morning.

It made me feel young again. The freedom of travel—to get in a car and go somewhere beautiful—is something that I will not take for granted ever again. I am so grateful to be vaccinated and healthy, and to be an American.

The only bad part of my trip was having to come home!

Lorraine Ziek, South Kortright, N.Y.

We took a family road trip during the third week of July 2021. We traveled to St Augustine, Fla., and spent the week visiting indoor and outdoor attractions as well as spending time on the beach.

Being fully vaccinated, we felt no stress over the crowds and enjoyed dining indoors at several establishments. The biggest disappointment was the continued lack of staffing in restaurants leading to long waits and often subpar service.

The trip was special because our son, David, 23, had recently graduated from Tennessee Tech University and our daughter, Hannah, 20, was able to join us as well while on summer break. She attends TTU also. As parents of adult kids, my wife, Karen, and I know that opportunities for the four of us to travel as a family will be harder to come by in the future. So, we made it an old-fashioned road trip.

We enjoyed local eateries like the Donut Experiment where you select the filling, topping and glaze for each doughnut. My daughter studies housing and design and enjoyed the architecture of St. Augustine, especially Flagler College’s rotunda and Tiffany stained-glass windows.

My son, who majored in marketing, is the beach bum of the family, and we enjoyed several afternoons on St. Augustine beach and watching sailboats on the Matanzas River.

In addition to eating a lot of great seafood, we also enjoyed a bunch of lighthearted tourist diversions like miniature golf, a visit to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, museums from serious to pirate-themed, and just hanging out in our rental cottage.

We were blessed to have the time to take a summer road trip this year. But we didn’t view it as a “break out from the pandemic.” We have worked in an office, traveled, shopped, worshiped, attended classes in person and online, and hosted family celebrations of birthdays, holidays and graduations throughout the pandemic.

We followed reasonable precautions including masks where required, hand sanitizer and staying out of strangers’ personal space, but otherwise we tried to continue with life. Like everyone else, we have lost friends to the pandemic. Maybe the pandemic made the days a little longer and the year a little shorter, but there was still plenty of opportunity for joy and family fun.

This trip was taken a couple of weeks before the Delta variant surge began. So, emotionally, the trip felt like a return to normal. We hoped it was the start of a time when we no longer worried about who we would offend by wearing a mask or not wearing a mask or any number of other triggers that pandemic stress has created.

As it turns out, we weren’t out of the woods yet. While that doesn’t change our perspective on the fun we had on our trip, it reminds us that we will need to continue to extend an extra measure of patience and grace as we work through the balance of the pandemic.

Traveling reminded us that some things don’t change: Twizzlers and Mountain Dew are the preferred road-trip vices, driving through Atlanta is still awful, and family time is the best time.

Adam Bernhardt, Cookeville, Tenn.

I was afraid of bringing Covid right to my mom’s door. We mutually decided it was worth the risk. I went alone and spent five days with her. Honestly, it was difficult. She struggles with COPD and emphysema.

I was really scared because the airlines were filling flights to capacity. Enforced masking in airports and for the entire flight was crucial to my decision to go. While waiting to disembark I noticed the man who sat in front of me was wearing his mask below his nose. I said something, loudly (but politely!), and he fixed it. A woman in a gorgeous burqa sitting across the aisle looked at me and said, “Good job!

That made my day! Between Covid fear and worrying about my mom, some things were made clear to me about the rest of my life and how I want it to go.

Meredith Phillips, East Hartford, Conn.

My group of eight college friends decided to rent an Airbnb for the entire month of December 2020. We decided on Charleston, S.C., because it was not a popular holiday destination and it had warm beaches.

We found a large house to rent to work from home during the first half of the month, visiting local attractions and coffee shops. Most of us took days off during the second half and went on mini-trips from Charleston and relaxed together.

It ended up being one of the best vacations. Covid made me realize that this type of extended, lazy trip is much more fun than the usually hurried vacations where you try to cram in as much as possible in the limited days off you have.

If there’s one thing I’d like to keep post-pandemic, it would be the option to work from home for an extended time during the holiday season and spend quality time with loved ones.

Aravind Anantha, Raleigh, N.C.

8-31-2021

‘Forever Changed’: CEOs Are Dooming Business Travel — Maybe For Good

A Bloomberg survey of 45 large companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia shows that 84% plan to spend less on travel post-pandemic.

Business travel as we’ve known it is a thing of the past. From Pfizer Inc., Michelin and LG Electronics Inc. to HSBC Holdings Plc, Hershey Co., Invesco Ltd. and Deutsche Bank AG, businesses around the world are signaling that innovative new communications tools are making many pre-pandemic-era trips history.

Take Akzo Nobel NV, Europe’s biggest paint maker, for instance. At its Amsterdam headquarters, Chief Executive Officer Thierry Vanlancker has spent the past year watching his manufacturing head, David Prinselaar, flap his arms, madly gesticulate and seemingly talk to himself while “visiting” 124 plants by directing staff with high-definition augmented-reality headgear on factory floors.

A task that meant crisscrossing the globe in a plane before is now done in a fraction of the time — and with no jet lag. For Vanlancker, there’s no going back.

“Trips to drum up business could drop by a third, and internal meetings by even more,” he said in an interview. “It’s a good thing for our wallets and helps our sustainability targets. Our customers have had a year of training, so it’s not a social no-no anymore to just reach out by video… There’s an enormous efficiency element.”

A Bloomberg survey of 45 large businesses in the U.S., Europe and Asia shows that 84% plan to spend less on travel post-pandemic. A majority of the respondents cutting travel budgets see reductions of between 20% and 40%, with about two in three slashing both internal and external in-person meetings.

The ease and efficiency of virtual software, cost savings and lower carbon emissions were the primary reasons cited for the cutbacks. According to the Global Business Travel Association, spending on corporate trips could slide to as low as $1.24 trillion by 2024 from a pre-pandemic peak in 2019 of $1.43 trillion.

Business travel has “forever changed,” Greg Hayes, CEO of jet-engine maker Raytheon Technologies Corp., said in a Bloomberg Radio interview in July. About 30% of normal commercial air traffic is corporate-related but only half of that is likely mandatory, he said. While the market may eventually recover, sophisticated communication technologies have “really changed our thinking in terms of productivity,” Hayes said.

Having saved billions from slashed travel budgets during the pandemic with only a marginal impact on operations, companies, banks, consulting firms and government offices will be hard pressed to explain why they’d return to their old ways.

Kit Kat chocolate-bar maker Hershey said the pandemic showed that online meetings were a more efficient use of time and financial resources. Companies like Pfizer are grappling with questions about what one accomplishes with a trip that can’t be done virtually, Tina Quattlebaum, its director of global travel operations, said at the GBTA Mid-Year Virtual Summit in July.

“We don’t think business travel will ever return to 2019 levels,” said Will Hawkley, the global head of travel and leisure at KPMG LLP. “Corporates are looking at their bottom-line, their environmental commitments, the demand from employees for more flexible working and thinking: Why do I have to bring that back?”

That’s a blow to the airline and hospitality industries — already among the biggest casualties of the pandemic. Business travelers, who buy premium-class or more-expensive refundable tickets, rang in as much as three-quarters of airlines’ pre-pandemic profits while accounting for only 12% of seats, according to PwC.

The hotels sector, which draws about two-thirds of its revenue from business travelers, could see a dip of as much as 18% by 2022 as virtual meetings replace 27% of corporate travel volumes, a Morgan Stanley study shows.

The world’s biggest airlines collectively lost a whopping $126 billion in 2020 and are set to lose another $48 billion this year, according to the International Air Transport Association, their lobby.

As they wrestle with those losses and the huge debts racked up after coronavirus punctured a decades-long boom in travel, the last thing airlines need is corporate customers cutting back. Carriers like Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, with thousands of staff and overhead to support, depend on business travelers returning.

“The effect of this structural decrease in business travel will be enormous for the industry, and especially for the airlines that are the most exposed to this category of traveler,” said Pascal Fabre, managing director in Paris for AlixPartners, a consulting firm.

Airlines are trying to stay optimistic. Delta CEO Ed Bastian said about 80% of the carrier’s large corporate clients have indicated that as much as 90% of their pre-Covid business travel will eventually return.

“I don’t expect we’re going to see a degradation in the aggregate of business demand over time,” he said in an interview. “The more people are connected in person, the more opportunities are created. I don’t see this being a significant body-blow to the industry as prognosticated by some.”

Traveling thousands of miles to meet with customers to discuss key issues across a table or over a meal made business sense before the pandemic and that hasn’t changed, said Warren East, the CEO of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, which makes aircraft engines.

“Covid-19 has definitely taught people that some of the mad regular dashes across the Atlantic hither and thither aren’t necessary,” he said, speaking at a net-zero event on June 17. “But when you peel back beyond that superficial analysis, you realize people were doing it because they thought it delivered real benefit to them.”

There may also be competitive pressures to keep flying, Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith said in an interview. “I hear many of our corporate customers saying that the day they lose an account because they weren’t somewhere face-to-face will immediately bring them back to the way operations were before.”

Airlines are banking on a recovery sparked by pent-up demand after about 18 months when executives couldn’t visit customers — hopes that are being dented by the spread of the delta variant. Even if there is an initial burst of activity, it will start to stabilize and the structural change to business travel will become evident by around 2024, according to Fabre.

“In the past, it was seen as a good thing to go to the other side of the world to shake someone’s hand, but not anymore,” Augustin de Romanet, the CEO of Aeroports de Paris, which operates dozens of airports around the world, said in an interview. “Many things that have been done by conference call during the pandemic will stay that way, especially when it comes to far-flung countries. This will be for costs and the environment as well as people’s wellbeing.”

Company executives travel for many reasons — from business development and customer support to trade shows, conferences and meetings with local staff. Trips for intra-company activities will likely bear the brunt of the cuts “because client relationships aren’t at stake,” said AlixPartners’ Fabre.

“We have learned how to work, develop products, sign contracts without traveling,” he said.

Deutsche Bank’s global head of Investment Banking Coverage and Advisory, Drew Goldman, said that while the bank’s client-related business travel will return to about 90% of pre-pandemic levels, trips for internal meetings will probably be a shadow of what they were before — at 25% to 30%.

“We will probably review our travel budget,” Societe Generale SA CEO Frederic Oudea said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “People will be very happy to shake hands again, but probably for really the important situations.”

Volkswagen AG is making employees jump through hoops before they can fly. Internal booking software steers them toward alternatives to flying, the most carbon-intensive form of travel.

They’re also asked to justify why they can’t conduct the business online. At French defense and tech giant Thales, “trips will be for longer and probably less frequent in order to optimize costs, environmental impact and wellbeing,” said CEO Patrice Caine.

In Singapore, United Overseas Bank Ltd., Southeast Asia’s third-biggest bank, plans to cut its travel budget by as much as 50%, and will limit trips to cases “where face-to-face interaction is essential,” said Dean Tong, head of group human resources.

On New York-based Marsh & McLennan Cos.’s second-quarter earnings call, CEO Dan Glaser said, “companies, not just Marsh McLennan, will travel with more purpose and will be more thoughtful about traveling.”

Sophisticated technologies are enabling companies to do things they never imagined doing remotely. At French tire maker Michelin, new tools are already eclipsing the automatic reflex to make a trip, CEO Florent Menegaux said in an interview. The company recently used a drone for a virtual visit of its Campo Grande plant in Brazil by the top manufacturing brass in France.

“We start machines remotely, have used drones to visit factories and train people from home,” Menegaux said. “We will continue to travel because human bonds are absolutely necessary to our activity, but we will most certainly have an overall reduction of about 20% to 30% in our travel costs.”

Royal Dutch Shell Plc has created online control rooms with interactive 3D simulations of oil platforms and plants, giving engineers virtual access from home. In Troy, Michigan, Kevin Clark, the CEO of Aptiv Plc, a former car parts unit of General Motors Co., is using drones and Oculus augmented-reality headsets to show customers the performance and manufacturing run rates of plants in Mexico, Hungary, or China.

“We won’t travel as much,” Clark said. “I think it’ll be more when we have to travel people will travel, versus, it’s nice to travel.”

For most companies, cost savings will be the primary driver to scale back, but carbon-footprint worries and employee wellbeing are not far behind, Fabre said.

Businesses globally are under pressure from investors and regulators to shrink their CO2 emissions. The European Commission rolled out an ambitious climate plan in July to force all industries to shift away from fossil fuels.

Aviation has long been a target even though it accounts for only about 2.4% of global human-induced CO2 emissions. That’s because the sector was growing rapidly before the pandemic and has other negative effects on the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

“Companies have acknowledged that reducing the level of flights is one way of reducing climate change,” said Andrew Murphy, aviation director at advocacy group Transport & Environment. “For the next 10 years, the best way to reduce emissions from aviation is to fly less.”

Airlines are providing companies tools to blunt the impact of CO2 emissions with carbon offsets and refreshing fleets with newer, more efficient planes. But with the tons of carbon dioxide they spew, airlines can’t do much to show that flying is a sustainable way to get around. Hydrogen-fueled planes and electric commercial jetliners are decades away, and alternative aviation fuel isn’t widely available and jacks up ticket prices.

Carriers may have to modify aircraft configurations to cut business class seats and add more premium economy places. Premium economy costs less to operate than business class and takes up less space.

Air France, for instance, is developing its so-called leisure-business category for passengers who buy premium-class tickets for holiday travel, according to Steven Zaat, the group’s CFO. Thirty-two Air France 777s are fitted with “quick change” systems that allow the airline to reduce the size of its business-class cabin.

The airline is still confident about a rebound in business travel, but “we can always reconfigure our planes if necessary,” Zaat said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

While airlines grapple with the possibility of fewer business customers, some of those clients are happy not to be zipping around the world all the time.

“A nice side effect of fewer long-haul business trips is less stress for the people who fly,” Hans-Ingo Biehl, the head of VDR, the German Business Travel Association, said in an interview. A study by the Baylor College of Medicine found frequent fliers have the same cancer risk as obese people. Also, companies have found that jet lag hurts productivity.

“There are a lot of myths and fantasy about travel, but it’s really very tiring,” said Michelin CEO Menegaux. “We should do it only when it’s absolutely necessary. I travel a lot and I can tell you it’s physically grueling and takes a heavy toll.”

Updated: 9-1-2021

Travel Agencies Are Having A Moment Amid Covid-19 Chaos

A business that lost ground to do-it-yourself online travel booking is back with the added complications of cancellations, border restrictions and testing requirements.

Zoom, ring lights, stationary bikes and food delivery. To the list of products and services that found new life because of the pandemic, you can add travel advisers.

Travel has grown difficult thanks to virus-related complexity, uncertainty, cancellations, delays, border restrictions and testing requirements. As a result, many travelers booking a beach getaway or other trips are turning to professionals to help them with plans. Travel advisers—don’t call them travel agents anymore—are cool again.

“With the pandemic, our credibility and our necessity have gone off the charts, and I think we’re now advocates,” says Jennifer Wilson-Buttigieg, co-president of Valerie Wilson Travel, a New York-based leisure and corporate travel agency that is a unit of Frosch International Travel. “Travel is possible. It’s just difficult.”

Do-it-yourself booking and declining commissions paid by airlines shrank travel agencies beginning in the 1990s. Survivors mostly booked cruises and elaborate trips for clients interested in luxury accommodations, plus the big business of corporate travel managers.

The industry has proven resilient, and now it’s hot. Travelers are itching to go somewhere after many sat grounded for a year or more. And they have myriad questions about what you have to do to travel internationally and how you can protect yourself against disappointment, delay and financial loss. More of them have turned to travel advisers.

A survey of leisure travelers conducted for the American Society of Travel Advisors and Sandals resorts this spring found roughly 17% of travelers are likely to use a travel adviser for the first time when the pandemic is over.

In the online survey of 410 travelers, 44% said they’re more likely to use a travel adviser. About 27% already did use advisers, so the difference is the first-time opportunity for advisers. (The survey’s margin of error was 4.8%.)

Avi Gilburt, a stock-market technical analyst and adviser in Maryland, had started looking for a travel adviser before the pandemic, but the crisis pushed him into the first-timer category. He and his wife were traveling more, and all the planning was becoming too much for him to handle.

“Covid was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he says.

Mr. Gilburt and his wife have continued to travel through the pandemic. That’s required a lot of changes and adjustments—Handled By Travel Adviser Angela Musso of Valerie Wilson Travel.

Using a travel adviser means you probably aren’t going to get the cheapest prices, Mr. Gilburt says, but the reduced hassle has justified the added cost.

And in some ways, advisers can save money. One cancellation involved a $10,000 nonrefundable booking at a five-star Caribbean hotel. Ms. Musso used her connections to get Mr. Gilburt a refund.

Travel advisers say their job has become more complex. They must track constantly changing border restrictions. They must sort through Covid-19 restrictions on insurance policies. They must have a Plan B for elaborate events like destination weddings or family reunions if Plan A becomes impractical because of a viral outbreak somewhere. Plan C may be necessary, too.

Just last week the governor of Hawaii tried to wave off vacationers and curtail nonessential trips because the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus was making enough people sick to approach the islands’ limited hospital capacity.

“Here we go again,” says Nancy Scorby of Scorby Travel & Cruise in St. Charles, Ill. Hawaii was one destination she had been successfully selling. Now it likely means a new wave of cancellations and rebookings.

Like many businesses, travel agencies suffered mightily during the pandemic. Advisers worked first to get customers who were stranded abroad home in the chaos of the shutdown in March 2020. Then they took up the fight for clients to get refunds and usable credits for canceled trips. Vacations got rebooked and rebooked again.

With little new revenue coming in and even some refunded fees going out, Marc Casto, president of leisure in the Americas for Flight Centre Travel Group, says he had to make significant layoffs. Now, he’s aggressively rehiring. Earlier this year, vaccination led to a surge of travel bookings.

“April was off-the-charts busy,” says Mr. Casto, based in Montvale, N.J., and also board chairman of ASTA. Many were new customers worried about all the risks and unknowns. In addition, there’s uncertainty about what’s actually open at various destinations for restaurants, museums, events and attractions, plus how to safely navigate ground transportation.

“Whenever there is complexity, whenever there is uncertainty, whenever there is mystery of rules, there is even more benefit from service,” Mr. Casto says.

ASTA held its annual convention in Chicago a week ago and attracted 550 travel advisers, more than the 470 who showed up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2019. At each gathering, the number of representatives from airlines, hotels, cruise lines, tour companies, rental car agencies and travel insurance providers outnumbered the actual agents.

The mood, participants say, was euphoric—not only excitement about reconnecting in person, but also energized by the industry’s sudden renaissance. There was even an education session for new travel advisers—people who joined the profession during the pandemic when few were traveling.

“I think the appreciation for the job has changed,” says Zane Kerby, ASTA’s chief executive.

One big question facing travel advisers: What do they now need to charge clients to earn profits when each trip requires more time to design, book and track?

Some agencies charged fees to clients; others relied solely on commissions. Now more training is required for agents. And if trips must be rebooked, advisers may end up spending hours and hours on hold with airlines, property-rental firms and others.

“For a $40 service fee, that’s not great math,” Mr. Kerby says.

Kareem George, who runs a three-person agency called Culture Traveler in Franklin, Mich., now offers an annual retainer or $2,500 in addition to a fee structure ranging from $100 to $500 per trip. He says more than 40% of his current clients are new to travel advisers as a result of the pandemic.

Services perhaps offered only to the best clients now may be mandatory, like restaurant reservations or local transportation arrangements.

“Consumers really get it more than ever,” he says. “Now is really an opportunity for those not charging fees previously to introduce fees.”

Intel For Travel In 2021

Travel Advisers Say They’ve Added New Strategies And Procedures To Planning Trips. Here Are Some Suggestions:

1) Stay in one country. No more touring across regions in multiple countries. You need to minimize border crossings and the testing requirements that come with that.

2) Know where and when you’ll go for your required Covid-19 test to re-enter the U.S. The test must meet certain requirements. Know how you’ll get to the test site, if you have to go somewhere, and how long the results will take.

3) Pay more attention to on-the-ground issues. Will you need dinner reservations? What are local mask requirements? What’s open and what’s restricted? How will you get around if you are worried about buses and subways?

4) Walk into an airport interview office if you need to renew your Global Entry but can’t get an appointment with Customs and Border Protection. Often officers can fit you in because of no-shows and schedule mix-ups.

Updated: 9-7-2021

Covid Travel Is Still A Disaster. It Doesn’t Need To Be

Draconian restrictions on international movement are failing to deliver benefits that warrant the costs.

The surreal nature of international travel in the Covid era was beamed live around the world last weekend. In the opening minutes of a soccer match in Sao Paolo between Brazil and Argentina, play ground to a halt when public-health officials walked onto the field to remove several Argentine athletes over an apparent breach of a 14-day quarantine (mandatory for travel via the U.K.). The game never resumed.

Eighteen months into the pandemic, travel restrictions are still tripping up regular families and firms, not just footballers. A U.S. ban on most travelers from two dozen European countries, instituted by Donald Trump in March of last year, remains in place despite a change of president and the fact that a higher proportion of people in the European Union and U.K. are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong residents returning home from places including the U.S. and France must spend 21 days in hotel quarantine even if they’re vaccinated, and the city bars entry to most other people. Australia’s borders are closed, with most international travel banned.

Obviously, caution is warranted around the delta variant. But the lack of pragmatism around international travel is striking. Although many governments have eased restrictions on movement at home, since recognizing the evidence that vaccines protect against severe forms of Covid, travel curbs appear to be preserved in cement.

A July report by the World Tourism Organization found that there had been no “significant” changes in curbs since Nov. 2020. For every bit of good news — Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates recently eased travel restrictions — there’s a snap-back, such as the EU’s re-imposition of curbs on American travelers after a summer reprieve.

This merits urgent attention. There are emotional and economic costs to restricting travel. Most visible is the tourism industry, which suffered its worst year on record in 2020 — losses may hit $2.4 trillion this year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Less visible are all the lives and careers that have been put on hold until travel resumes, from full-time workers and seasonal staff to international students with big future potential. One chief executive officer recently quit his post after tiring of transatlantic travel restrictions.

The benefits, meanwhile, are hard to spot. Consider the treatment of travelers from France, who are not allowed into the U.S. and who had to be quarantined upon arrival in the U.K. until recently, even if they were vaccinated. Today they still have to book a Covid test two days after arrival.

All this to what end? The U.S. and U.K. are currently reporting around 500 new daily cases per million people, about twice that of France. Paris is deemed the most open city out of 40 destinations tracked by Bloomberg. Even New Zealand, with its high border control and location thousands of miles from anywhere, concedes that, even with vaccines, infections will rise when its borders reopen due to variants like delta.

One alternative to travel bans and ineffectual rules would be to better differentiate between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. As of June, only 17% of all travel destinations worldwide specifically mentioned vaccinated passengers in their travel policy, according to the World Tourism Organization. Research from airline lobby group IATA also finds that two-fifths of EU states aren’t allowing in vaccinated travelers from countries deemed safe outside the bloc.

For all the caveats on transmission and waning vaccine effectiveness, there should be more openness to the vaccinated. Of course, this would mean that rich countries need to push harder to expand supply and production of vaccines in the developing world. Otherwise those without access will be unfairly punished.

The World Health Organization should also harmonize competing definitions of “full vaccination” to reduce confusion as countries roll out booster shots and third doses. More broadly, politicians need to start talking about travel as an opportunity, not just a risk. Wanting to avoid giving privileged holidaymakers license to spread disease is perhaps justified; denying vaccinated families, students and workers a chance at normality isn’t.

No relaxation of curbs is risk-free. But this has to be balanced against the progress we’ve made so far in managing Covid — and the reward of improving mobility. At this stage of the pandemic, with the tools at our disposal, a shift looks worth it.

Updated: 9-10-2021

Cruises Are Back: Here’s What You Need To Know About Safety Before You Climb Aboard

Major cruise lines are setting sail once more and trying to make a squeaky-clean break from the past. We offer the latest guidance from health experts and look at the big changes onboard and onshore.

AFTER ALMOST 18 dormant months in the age of Covid 19, cruise lines are increasingly beginning to sail again. American Cruise Line launched from Florida in March. Crystal Cruises resumed operations, with two vessels sailing in the Bahamas, in July. The Norwegian Jade is cruising the Greek Isles, with many Americans on board.

At the end of August, Oceania Cruises’ Marina set sail from Copenhagen, and its sister ship, the Riviera, is scheduled to travel from Istanbul to Trieste in October. The 2022 itineraries on Viking Ocean Cruises are almost fully booked. Clearly there is demand, and passengers are willing to climb aboard. The question is: Is it safe to cruise now?

Are Cruise Ships Safe?

Public perception that the answer is yes significantly increased in recent months according to a July survey by the travel marketing firm MMGY Global. And grim images of giant virus-riddled boats marooned off shore had been fading—at least until August when coronavirus infections were identified aboard the Carnival Vista cruise ship sailing out of Galveston, Texas. (A 77-year-old passenger, treated onboard and then evacuated to an Oklahoma hospital, later died. The ship was able to prevent further spread of the virus.)

“The cruise model does give you a chance to control the environment more than other sectors of hospitality,” said Rubén Rodríguez, president of MSC Cruises USA, who notes the low incidence of Covid since sailings resumed.

According to Bermello Ajamil & Partners, an architecture firm with a maritime focus, only 27 positive Covid-19 cases have been identified among the estimated 1.6 million passengers who have sailed in 2021. (The firm compiles its data from cruise line press releases and industry news outlets, among other sources.)

Covid-19 cases among crew members are harder to track, but Mark Ittel, senior vice president of ports and maritime at Bermello Ajamil & Partners, said that the cruise lines’ new safety protocols appear to be working.

After Covid outbreaks were reported on dozens of cruise ships in February 2020 and March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a “no-sail” order, banning most passenger vessels from sailing in U.S. waters. The order was lifted in October, replaced with a set of rules that ships had to comply with before they were allowed to resume their voyages.

Even with these precautions in place, CDC officials say cruising is not a zero-risk activity and that non-vaccinated people should avoid all cruises, including river cruises, world-wide. The CDC also recommends that vaccinated people should get tested before boarding and that anyone with a serious illness or an increased risk of serious illness should not cruise at all.

The agency has also established a color-coding system that tracks ships sailing in U.S. waters, operating under health and safety protocols that align with the agency’s standards.

“There are clear risks involved in cruising,” said Dr. Lucy E. Wilson, senior adviser to the University for Public Health and Pandemic Response at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. “The risk is stratified by vaccinated people versus unvaccinated people. The unvaccinated are clearly at higher risk of contracting and then spreading the virus.

That’s true in general and it’s true on a cruise ship.” Dr. Wilson—who noted that what we know today can change tomorrow—also pointed out that with the Delta variant being the predominant strain circulating in the U.S., even vaccinated people remain at risk for contracting and spreading the virus, though they’re generally less likely to become seriously ill.

“It’s risk-benefit tolerance,” said Kelly Gebo, MD MPH and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. “For some people, going to the gym is important for their mental health. So they are willing to take the risk.” Consider your own circumstances (age, general health, doctor’s advice, vaccination status, etc.) and weigh those against what you’ll gain from, say, four days and five nights of floating around turquoise waters.

Even in the before times, cruise ships were subject to biannual CDC inspections. Now, under strict pandemic scrutiny from the CDC, the industry is even more highly regulated—from below-deck waste management systems to guest-facing food service protocols—and required to make regular health and safety reports.

It’s had time to identify vulnerabilities, overhaul internal weaknesses, retrain staff, arm itself against new eventualities and form advisory boards (such as Healthy Sail Panel, a group organized by Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings that includes a former Secretary of Health and Human Services and a former commissioner of the FDA). Some cruise lines undertook all-volunteer test cruises to put all the upgrades and protocols through their paces.

“Since this very difficult time, we’ve had an opportunity to demonstrate that ships are extremely safe,” said Roberto Martinoli, president and chief executive officer of Silversea Cruises. “We have hospitals on board, very well trained personnel, and we need to produce reports of anything that happens on board [which] helps to make it efficient.

The virus exists. We cannot deny it. Because of the nature of the virus, it might happen that someone [infected] might arrive at the ship. But it will not get out of control. We can stop it at the beginning.”

For those ready to book a stateroom, here are some of the changes to cruise life and the health-and-safety measures to expect, from gangway to shining sea.

How Crowded Are The Ships?

As they gradually resume sailing, most cruises are operating at reduced capacity to give people more room in common spaces like bars and theaters on board and to work within local guidelines in port. For now, MSC Cruises has capped ships pursuing European itineraries at 70% capacity and those sailing the Americas at 50%, which means a maximum of 2,250 passengers aboard MSC Meraviglia, the 4,500-passenger vessel that started sailing from Miami last month.

And Metropolitan Touring, which operates small expedition journeys in the Galápagos Islands sold through luxury companies like Tauck and Abercrombie & Kent, reduced capacity on its ships by 25% to allow dining room distancing and to better manage guest-to-guide ratio.

Taking into account vaccination rates among passengers and mask-wearing protocols, density matters more than the size of the boat, according to Dr. Gebo of Johns Hopkins University. And consider the nature of activities. “Outside is generally fine,” she said. But you’re facing higher risks in a gym with lots of people. And “a three-day party at sea with gambling, dancing and drinking is different than going whale-watching.”

Do I Need to Be Vaccinated?

Some cruise lines—including Silversea and Viking, which is operating its full fleet of six ocean ships and 45 of its 78 river boats—require all passengers to be fully vaccinated, as do some countries, such as the Bahamas. “We made the decision early on,” said Viking Chairman Torstein Hagen. “I don’t want to make it a political issue,” he added, saying the issue is “the safety of our staff and passengers.”

Others suggest full vaccination and put restrictions on unvaccinated passengers. MSC, for example, has vaccinated-only pools, and Atlas Ocean Voyages, a new deluxe adult-only line, warns that, depending on the regulations of the countries visited, unvaccinated guests may be subject to additional testing and restricted from independent shoreside activities.

Most companies have implemented a battery of safeguards (and so much print and digital paperwork that it can be worth engaging a travel adviser to help): pre-screening; PCR testing before, during and after the cruise (some boats now have their own labs onboard); face masks during embarkation and disembarkation and when indoors (except in your cabin, or seated in a bar or restaurant); and tracking and tracing measures just in case.

How Well Ventilated are the Ships?

An open bar, state-of-the-art water toys, and a Fancy Chef Steakhouse are all well and good. But now onboard amenities also include hospital-grade disinfectants, new fresh-air ventilation systems and robots that clean at night using UV light.

Norwegian, Oceania, Regent Seven Seas, Princess and Virgin Voyages are using AtmosAir’s bipolar ionization technology for their HVAC systems, which, according to the manufacturer, generates positively and negatively charged ions to reduce contaminants and pollutants in the air. A video on the AtmosAir website claims that the system “restores inside air to what you find on a mountain top.”

Silversea has installed medical grade air filters (MERV 13 or HPA) to supply fresh air to all areas every hour. Across the cruise lines, sales of interior cabins are down, and some lines, such as MSC, use them as isolation rooms, if needed; Viking has none, and all its ocean ship staterooms have a balcony.

What Other Onboard Changes Should I Expect?

Recent cruisers recommend packing your patience along with your sunscreen. “I felt better and safer on board than at the airport, on the airplane or in the hotel,” said Carolyn Spencer Brown, chief content officer at Cruise Media, a publishing and consulting company, who sailed with Viking and with Silversea this past summer.

“There is more space, more al fresco dining, new protocols like spit tests [a Covid-19 saliva test] and I had no concern about ventilation. But you have to be flexible.”

Some things, like getting aboard, might take a little longer. You may not be able to enter the dining room without washing your hands. Food service generally no longer features passed hors d’oeuvres or self-serve buffets, and you’ll see Plexi-glass popping up here and there. You might have to reserve spa or gym time in advance. And when it comes to the pool, expect crowd control.

What About Shore Excursions?

Cruise lines can exert a high degree of control aboard ship, but passengers face a lot of variables in port and on land. Ecuador, for example, requires masks to be worn at all times while visiting the blue-footed boobies on their uninhabited rocks in the Pacific.

MSC Cruises sells what the company calls “Social Bubble Shore Excursions” to isolate its passengers and protect local environments. (On MSC’s first Covid-era cruise in August 2020, a family left the group in Capri and were not allowed back onboard. Other guests cheered.)

Before the pandemic, several companies including Disney, MSC and Holland America began buying up private islands in the Caribbean to use for their exclusive shore excursions, which in the Covid age let the lines extend the bubble they can create on board. Otherwise, it’s important to know where you’re going. “When going from a largely vaccinated vessel to a general public area,” said Dr. Wilson, “there are widely variant virus levels and controls.

You’re getting off, the crew is getting off, exposure is elevated. Covid-19 has showed us it is a moving target.”

Biden’s Sweeping Vaccine Mandate Stops Short of Domestic Flyers

Among the major measures President Joe Biden announced this week to get more Americans vaccinated, one high-profile move was missing: requiring vaccines or negative tests to get on an airplane.

Countries including France, Italy and Canada have imposed requirements, or will, for domestic travel as a way to slow the spread of the coronavirus and its emerging variants. Vaccine and testing requirements have taken hold widely for international flights, and the U.S. is weighing further restrictions on visitors, including a vaccine requirement for all foreign nationals.

But, at home, the U.S. still only requires a mask for domestic flights, despite calls from some health experts to raise the bar and require proof of vaccines or a negative test. Biden stopped short of tightening the rules when he unveiled a new series of vaccine mandates on Thursday that will affect millions of federal and health care workers, as well as a vaccine-or-testing requirement for any business with 100 or more staff.

Instead, the administration doubled fines for people who refuse to wear masks on planes. Biden has walked a fine line to avoid triggering more backlash at home, where public health measures and restrictions have become political lightning rods. A top aide signaled Friday that the administration isn’t interested in mandates aimed at consumers.

“Workplaces are a very efficient and effective way to ensure that people get vaccinated,” White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday, when asked if they’ve ruled out a flight requirement. But, he added, “We’re not taking any measures off the table.”

Air travel into the U.S. from some countries remains restricted — including a ban on entry of most non-Americans who have visited parts of Europe recently. All travelers into the U.S. need to show a recent negative test, regardless of vaccination status.

But other countries restrict domestic travel, too. Italy and France require proof of vaccine, a recent negative test or recovery from a virus for domestic flights and long-distance trains, while Canada has said it will require vaccinations for all air travel by the end of October.

‘Low-Hanging Fruit’

In the U.S., however, there’s been little appetite for vaccine requirements for Americans arriving internationally, or any traveler domestically, and airline chief executives have warned of headaches — though carriers regularly handle vaccine screening for international travel.

Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University, has urged the administration to require vaccinations for domestic air and train travel, instead of just requiring masks. “A travel requirement is low-hanging fruit,” she said in an email. “If you want the privilege of traveling, you need to get vaccinated.”

Airlines have pushed against any such measure, which could sap consumer demand — or act as an incentive for people who’ve held off until now. United Airlines Holdings Inc. CEO Scott Kirby told MSNBC last month that it would be “logistically impractical to do domestically,” but said it would be up to government to direct it.

Cumbersome For Airlines

“Even if we decided that was something we wanted to do, that would be incredibly cumbersome to do inside the United States,” American Airlines Group Inc. CEO Doug Parker told the New York Times. International flights have sufficient layover times and checkpoints to administer the measure, but “it wouldn’t be physically possible to do without enormous delays in the airline system,” he said.

He said he doubted whether airline safety would be enhanced by a vaccine requirement. “Requiring vaccinations to travel and not requiring vaccinations to do anything else around the country isn’t something we’re looking to do,” Parker said.

Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Ed Bastian told WNYW-TV in New York in August that “the logistical challenge of getting vaccination paperwork and understanding exemptions, and who could travel and who wouldn’t, I think would cause a massive crimp on the operations.”

Airlines for America, an industry group, said in a statement that carriers have implemented several safety measures already, and that rising vaccination rates overall are another layer of protection. Its statement declined to specifically say if it supported or opposed a vaccine mandate.

Choice of Airlines

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said transmission on airplanes is rare — though risks persist, including in airports — but that it’s important for airlines to go as far as possible. He’s started flying United more because they have announced they will require employee vaccinations.

“I think I would also favor airlines in which all passengers were vaccinated or tested,” he said in an email.

EU Travel Recommendations: What U.S. Travelers Need To Know

Many countries are in no hurry to close to U.S. travelers just yet.

The European Union’s new recommendation to halt nonessential travel from the U.S. due to the rise of Covid-19 cases stateside could create fresh virus-related travel uncertainty.

The Aug. 30 announcement suggested that vaccinated travelers would still be permitted into EU member countries, though it is up to each nation to set its own restrictions. Stavros Lambrinidis, the EU’s ambassador to the U.S., said on Twitter that the recommendation means only essential travelers and vaccinated people from the U.S. would be allowed into the bloc.

Many European countries appear to be in no hurry to close the door to American tourists, with major tourist destinations Spain and Greece saying on Aug. 31 that they would stay open for American visitors for the coming weeks at least.

Other countries, including France, said they have no immediate plans to change their rules for travel from the U.S. Italy and the Netherlands, however, have recently changed entry requirements for U.S. travelers.

The EU travel list is reviewed every two weeks and isn’t binding for member states, though it has generally set the pattern for who can visit the 27-country bloc. The EU had previously decided in June to add the U.S. to its “safe list.”

Should countries tighten entry rules, the European recommendation could thwart some Americans’ fall and winter trip plans, adding more challenges to an already complex year for international travel—one marked by passport delays, changing vaccination and testing requirements and myriad rules for booking at various destinations.

Here’s what we know so far about what the EU recommendation means for travelers.

Is The EU Open To U.S. citizens?

Citing the spread of Covid-19 cases stateside, EU countries voted to remove the U.S. from a “safe list” of countries for nonessential travel, meaning vacations and recreational trips. The EU reviews its travel list every two weeks.

Pressure to remove the U.S. from the travel list has also risen because Washington has maintained a ban on Europeans’ nonessential travel to the U.S.

Under EU rules, the bloc is supposed to consider removing from the safe list any country with more than 75 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the previous 14 days.

The authority can take other factors into account when making its decision, including whether the third country has opened up to EU citizens.

The U.S. infection rate rose above 75 per 100,000 earlier in the summer, but EU member states agreed not to respond immediately.

Member states have become frustrated in recent weeks over the U.S.’s refusal to drop restrictions on EU travelers.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned that the EU wouldn’t allow the lack of reciprocity to “drag on for weeks.”

The European Union said it has hit its target of fully vaccinating 70% of adults against Covid-19 by the end of summer, though rates among countries vary.

The World Health Organization has warned that the pace of vaccinations in the continent appears to be faltering, and that less vaccinated parts of Europe are at risk of fresh outbreaks and new restrictions to stop the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant of the virus.

Does This Mean I Can’t Travel To Europe?

For now, many countries are allowing U.S. visitors, though some are adding new entry requirements.

Spain, for example, had some of the least restrictive rules for U.S. tourists this summer, previously requiring no proof of vaccination or negative tests for Americans before entering the country.

But beginning Sept. 6, U.S. travelers will be allowed to enter Spain only if they first present a QR code generated through the Spain Travel Health portal.

In addition, U.S. tourists must also show proof of vaccination if they are traveling for a nonessential purpose, such as tourism. Children under 12 are exempt from these requirements if traveling with vaccinated adults.

Unvaccinated travelers from the U.S. won’t be permitted to enter France for nonessential purposes starting Sunday, Sept. 12. Those who are able to provide a “compelling” reason for travel will need a negative Covid test, and must isolate for seven days upon arrival. Vaccinated U.S. tourists can still vacation in the country.

Italy also now requires fully vaccinated Americans to provide a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of arrival. In addition to showing a negative test, unvaccinated travelers must also quarantine for five days upon arrival and then be tested again.

As of Sept. 4, unvaccinated Americans also can’t travel to the Netherlands for nonessential purposes, such as vacations. Vaccinated travelers will need to quarantine for 10 days upon arrival but might be able to shorten the quarantine period by getting tested on the fifth day. Travelers must also show proof of a negative Covid-19 test as of Sept. 6.

Unvaccinated Americans are now prohibited from traveling to Denmark unless they have a “worthy purpose” for entry as defined by the Danish government, which might include being a student, an au pair or an attendee of a documented business meeting. Fully vaccinated Americans are allowed to enter for any reason, including tourism.

Other countries have decided to temporarily stop tourism from the U.S. Sweden implemented a ban on nonessential travel from the U.S., effective Sept. 6, including by vaccinated vacationers. The country said it is considering exempting fully vaccinated residents of certain countries from the entry restriction.

Some countries are proceeding as they have been for the past few months. A Greek official said the country will continue to welcome U.S. visitors for the rest of the tourism season, while maintaining monitoring at Greece’s borders.

Will My Airline Refund My Flight If I Can’t Travel?

Many carriers have eliminated change fees on domestic and international flights. As of Monday afternoon, airlines said they would continue to monitor the situation but provided few specifics.

“We continue to evaluate our travel waivers and policies based on market conditions and current travel restrictions that are in place,” said Andrea Koos, a spokeswoman for American Airlines.

United Airlines also said it would keep customers informed of any changes to their travel plans. “We’ll continue to monitor how member states respond to this new guidance,” said spokeswoman Nicole Carriere.

Delta Air Lines said customers can use an interactive map on its website to review changing requirements. Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for the airline, also noted that if a flight is canceled for any reason—whether domestic or international—customers are entitled to a refund.

Will my travel insurance cover my trip if the country I’m visiting isn’t open to visitors?

Most standard trip-cancellation policies won’t cover this type of situation, says Stan Sandberg, co-founder of TravelInsurance.com, a policy-comparison site. “The border shutdown is one of the big holes still in the coverage terms of most standard travel-insurance policies,” he says.

Mr. Sandberg said that, in the beginning of the pandemic, some travelers were able to receive refunds from airlines and hotels when borders closed. “Of course, that still is dependent on the travel supplier, the hotel or the airline, and what their policies are,” he says.

Travelers who have “cancel for any reason” coverage will find themselves in a better position to get money back.

This coverage is often sold as a supplemental policy and will allow you to receive reimbursement for your prepaid and nonrefundable trip costs. It can cost up to about 60% of your base insurance plan and will typically reimburse about 75% of your trip cost.

“So you’re not going to get 100% back,” Mr. Sandberg says. “That ‘cancel for any reason’ feature does give you the best protection against a border closing or government shutdown.”

What Else Should I Keep In Mind?

U.S. travelers have faced many complications traveling abroad this summer. The time frame to receive a passport is far longer than it was pre-pandemic, with standard passport applications taking up to 18 weeks and expedited applications taking up to 12 weeks.

Additionally, many attractions across the EU, including museums, are requiring reservations this year to head off large gatherings.

Updated: 9-12-2021

What Travel Investors Need To Know

Negative commentary from airline companies hardly means all near-term travel is doomed.

We all wanted 2021 to be different, but it is bringing a lot more of the same. That doesn’t mean travel investors need to universally pump the brakes.

Ahead of an investor conference on Thursday, a handful of major airlines warned in regulatory filings that their third quarter may not look as rosy as hoped.

United Airlines noted a deceleration in customer bookings for travel demand, while Southwest Airlines reported a continued softness in bookings—even in leisure—and elevated trip cancellations.

American Airlines similarly said that, after a strong July, it saw a softness in near-term bookings in August and an increase in near-term cancellations. All three suggested the Delta variant is having a dampening effect on business.

Investors have to some degree been ahead of this curve, but there is room for a sharper turn. It may not be that all travel has been put on hold, but rather that, as the Delta variant continues to spread, consumers are simply more wary of where they go and how they get there.

On its earnings call last month, Walt Disney Co. said theme park reservations at its domestic parks remained strong, noting overall park reservations were above levels it reported in its fiscal third quarter ending July 3.

As of Friday morning, reservations were no longer available for the next three Saturdays at both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, according to Disney’s online reservation system.

That is only one data point, but it is suggestive of continued demand for trips that consumers may have put on hold last year. A recent U.S. survey from Jefferies showed that, of those who haven’t yet traveled this year, roughly 30% say they planned to travel in the second half of the year.

The survey also showed that most survey respondents plan to take the same number or more trips this year than they took in 2019, regardless of vaccination status.

It is unlikely that everyone who holds a weekend Disneyland reservation this month lives in or around Disneyland’s hometown of Anaheim, Calif. But, given general airline commentary on Thursday, it is likely many ticket holders live within driving distance.

That could be good news for companies offering drive-to lodging such as Airbnb, whose shares are up roughly 15% since the end of July. It may also benefit Expedia Group, which owns Vrbo.

While Expedia’s shares are up nearly 50% over the past year, they fell 10% in the month of August. Spooking investors might be that lodging was 70% of the online travel agent’s revenue in 2019, growing to 78% in 2020, as air travel cratered.

But all hope isn’t lost. On Thursday, Marriott International Chief Executive Tony Capuano said at an investor conference that, although there was a slight decline in revenue per available room in August from July, there has been some stabilization this month.

He also noted two business travel trends that should benefit the lodging sector overall. Because travel today is more onerous, often requiring vaccination, proof of that vaccination and some added risk, Mr. Capuano said he is seeing workers extending business trips to get more enjoyment for the effort. That also may mean more so-called bleisure travel, he said, which blends business and leisure trips.

Marriott’s stock traded up following Mr. Capuano’s remarks on Thursday, but there may be other companies better positioned to take advantage of the bleisure trend right now.

Fresh data from hotel analytics firm STR show that as a four-week moving average for the period ended Sept. 4, occupancy rates for interstate, small town and suburban hotels were near or above where they were in the comparable period of 2019. Meanwhile, urban, resort and airport hotels continue to lag behind on a relative basis.

That bodes well for drive-to home stay demand, but also for roadside lodging companies. Choice Hotels International, for example, has said more than half of its domestic locations are within one mile of a highway exit and 90% of them are in suburban, small town or interstate locations.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, whose brands include Super 8, Days Inn and Travelodge, also stands to benefit. Occupancy rates for economy-class and midscale hotels were recently above levels seen in the comparable period of 2019, while more expensive hotel options lagged behind, STR’s data show.

For travel investors, it may just be about picking the right ride.

Travel And Covid-19 Testing: What To Know If You’re Flying Or Taking A Cruise

Some at-home tests are permitted, but leave yourself plenty of time to test before your trip.

More travel destinations are now requiring travelers to present negative Covid-19 tests for entry, even those who are fully vaccinated. The changes are adding fresh complexity to an already-confounding time for travel.

Travelers are struggling to both keep up with changing test guidelines and find acceptable tests that will provide results by the time they need to fly.

After the European Union removed the U.S. from its “safe” list of countries, some member nations began imposing new rules for travelers. Italy, for example, now requires fully vaccinated travelers to submit a negative test taken within 72 hours of arrival in the country.

And beginning Sept. 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will require fully vaccinated cruise passengers to submit proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within two days of boarding a ship. Previously, fully vaccinated passengers had to provide negative test results within three days of boarding.

“Things change daily,” says Susan Peavey, owner of Susan Peavey Travel Inc. in Marshfield, Mass. Travelers have to understand each country’s rules and regulations, she says, and in some cases additional requirements at destinations, such as resorts that are now requiring proof of vaccination.

Finding the correct tests within the allowed time frame is proving challenging for many. In some areas of the country, Covid-19 tests are harder to come by, and acceptable at-home tests can be costly.

If you’ve got a trip coming up, here’s the latest advice on which tests you’ll need to fly or join a cruise—and how to find them.

Determine Which Covid-19 Test You Need

Travel advisers say travelers are seeking out at-home tests, but are often unsure which ones are acceptable. The Abbott BinaxNOW Covid-19 Ag Card home test, for example, is a rapid antigen test that is widely accepted by many cruise lines and airlines because it includes the supervision of a telemedicine professional.

The professional will watch you take the Covid-19 test, and you will receive a validated result through an app. The tests can cost $150 for a pack of six.

There is great demand for at-home self-tests, but many of those tests don’t meet CDC testing requirements for international travel because they don’t include supervision from a telehealth professional.

The type of test you can take also depends on your vaccination status. Many cruise lines will accept antigen tests for fully vaccinated travelers, but unvaccinated travelers, including children under 12, must submit PCR tests.

Nucleic acid amplification tests, which include PCR tests, are also widely accepted and available at pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens.

Robin Katz, a travel adviser who owns a Cruise Planners franchise in Miami, says she recommends travelers take both a PCR test and a rapid antigen test if time allows.

PCR tests are widely accepted, she says, but the results can take longer to arrive, so having a rapid antigen test can also be helpful in time-sensitive situations, she says.

Some countries, such as Canada and Anguilla, don’t accept antigen tests. Travelers will need to look closely at each country’s specific requirements.

Give Yourself Plenty Of Time To Get A Test

Randy Mewes, a mechanic for a John Deere dealership, lives in rural Nebraska, about an hour’s drive southeast from Lincoln.

He knew he needed to get a Covid-19 test before departing on a Carnival cruise to Alaska last month, but says the chain pharmacies nearest to him were in Lincoln. He hoped to find a more convenient option, while making sure he got his results in time.

Mr. Mewes, who is fully vaccinated, went to a nearby retirement home in Adams, Neb., where he knew staff members were tested weekly. He was able to get a rapid antigen test and get his negative results the day before he boarded the cruise.

Travel agents suggest doing a broad search for testing locations if local pharmacies are booked up. Ms. Katz notes that Zoo Miami, for example, offers PCR tests.

Because of the tightened timing for tests, some cruise lines are offering passengers options. Royal Caribbean International now sells at-home test kits, which can be ordered online and cost $69.99 for a pack of two and $99.99 for a pack of three.

Carnival previously said it would look into providing rapid testing at departure ports, but later said the “logistics of making this service widely available to a large number of guests doesn’t make this a viable option.”

The cruise line now suggests customers order an at-home test or make an appointment at a pharmacy or Quest Diagnostics location.

Disney Cruise Line will require all passengers to take a rapid PCR test at the terminal before boarding starting Sept. 13, regardless of vaccination status. The test is provided free of charge, the cruise line said.

Plan Ahead To Save On Testing Fees

If you plan ahead, you can also save on testing costs. Last month, Cortney Buckelew, who works as an operations manager, scheduled antigen tests at a private walk-in clinic near her home in Land O’ Lakes, Fla., before her Royal Caribbean cruise, which left Saturday.

The tests would cost $100 each for her and her husband. The couple found a county testing site and got free rapid antigen tests, saving them $200.

Travelers must also provide a negative test to re-enter the U.S. by air; those tests must be taken no more than three days before boarding a plane home.

Consult the U.S. Embassy website for the country you are visiting; they have information about the average cost of PCR and antigen tests locally. In Italy, for example, antigen tests cost about $25 and PCR tests cost about $75, according to the U.S. Embassy there.

Some hotels in the Caribbean are offering testing on-site, says Ms. Peavey, or can recommend nearby testing sites. It can be more difficult to find a test in Europe, she says, in part because travelers need to ensure they are taking the correct type of test and will receive results in time.

Some pharmacies offer walk-in Covid-19 testing, but Ms. Peavey recommends ordering at-home tests before you depart, and taking them under the supervision of a telehealth professional within three days of your return. Many airlines have links to purchase these tests on their websites.

Some airports offer rapid testing in terminals pre-departure. United Airlines, for example, has rapid testing available at many U.S. airports through a partnership with XpresCheck. Tests can cost $200 each.

Print Out Your Test Results

Many airlines will allow you to upload vaccination records and negative test results to an app. Having a hard copy on hand can help, too. Ms. Katz says she cautions clients against relying only on digital copies in case they lose Internet access or cell service when their results are being checked.

Mr. Mewes also recommends keeping the paper copies with you. When he was waiting to board the cruise in Seattle, he realized the paper that showed his negative test result was in his luggage, which had been taken away to be loaded onto the ship. He chased down the luggage cart, and got the result back in time. “Keep everything together, and it’ll save you a lot of heartache,” he says.

Get Tested—Even If You Don’t Have To

Not every international destination requires a negative test for entry, but many travel advisers say they tell their clients to take a test regardless. “If you can do it [easily], why not,” says Jerry Lang, president of House of Travel, which is based in Aventura, Fla. “The rule might change when you’re flying.”

It is also helpful to know your Covid-19 status before traveling. Because negative tests are required to return to the U.S., you don’t want to find out you are positive after you have departed, and need to pay for time spent in quarantine accommodations, says Ms. Peavey: “The worst surprise is to test positive and have to stay in a destination.”

Updated: 3-30-2023

Can You Use ChatGPT To Plan Travel? It’s Hilarious And Can Actually Work

We put the AI chatbot to the test using three very different scenarios, and its performance varied widely. Still, its successes showed surprising promise.

Travel planning correlates with happiness—so say a million articles, researchers and well-published scientific papers. So why is it so danged overwhelming?

Maybe it’s because we think we’re looking for something unique when in reality we don’t want to venture that far off the beaten path. Or because the internet seems so full of ideas, yet always points us to the same over-Instagrammed clichés. (It’s a real paradox.) Or because our dreams are bigger than our budgets, given current headlines.

Tired of seeing the flickering cursor in a Google search bar—and wondering what it was that I was actually searching for—I decided to enlist generative artificial intelligence. After all, Chat GPT-4, the latest version of Open AI’s chatbot, promises to iterate creatively with users in order to solve complex problems.

Here’s how it tackled a variety of travel planning situations—for two alter egos I created to test the technology—and how it might help you, too. The answer is, as with anything, a truly mixed bag.

The Success Story

The Mission: A relaxing, family-friendly trip with two (very) young kids

Score: 9/10

Most glossy hotels would rather tell you how they cater to honeymooners than to toddlers, despite the fact that millennials—their once-coveted demographic—now globe-trot lavishly with their rugrats.

I threw ChatGPT a curve ball by asking it not only to find me five-star Caribbean resorts with kids clubs but specifically ones that would accept my 4-year-old; to my frustration, most kids clubs start at age 5.

Its first suggestion was a perfect bull’s-eye: The Four Seasons Nevis actually lets kids as young as 3 participate in its Kids for All Seasons programming. (Many of those activities are complimentary, in a further surprise!) When I dug around the resort’s website to verify ChatGPT’s suggestion, I could see evidence of a pink-hued playground on the sand (that my daughter would love) and a beautiful arts and crafts station at the kids club. Sold.

It also suggested Eden Roc Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic, where I actually tried to plan our spring break trip this year. We scratched it because the flights from New York were astonishingly expensive; the resort itself is an amenity-packed dream for families with kids, and its Koko Kid’s Club indeed takes 4-year-olds.

Less on the nose were suggestions for all-inclusive resorts Beaches Turks & Caicos and Grand Velas Riviera Maya. They scratch the kid-friendly itch beautifully, but aren’t in the same threshold for luxury. On another query, ChatGPT recommended great hotels such as Malliouhana in Anguilla, where my kiddo isn’t actually old enough to partake in the 5-and-up Mini-Explorers’ Program.

(Disclaimer: None of this information is easy to find online; I find myself digging for it in the least-seen corners of hotel websites. It’s also possible that ChatGPT was simply referring to outdated, pre-2021 information; that’s one thing that OpenAI warns about explicitly when you begin using it.)

The bot also did surprisingly well when I gave it even fewer parameters. In a fresh query, I asked it to brainstorm a relaxing vacation that I could take with my 1-year-old, ideally within two time zones of home.

Since it didn’t know I live in New York, the second half of my question threw it for a bit of a loop—prompting suggestions of Vancouver! San Diego! ChatGPT is human-like in the way it phrases responses, but it doesn’t ask follow-up questions.

It’s best to be specific. Even so, its suggestions included Costa Rica and its rain forest reserve near the Arenal volcano, where I happen to have a future trip in the works.

ChatGPT didn’t quite drill down to the hotel I’m looking at (Nayara Tented Camp) but it came close by suggesting I go to the Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo, where we could try “a range of family-friendly amenities and activities, including a kids’ club, family pool, and a variety of outdoor adventures such as zip-lining and surfing lessons.”

(Did it remember I also have a 4-year-old and a taste for luxury?) The suggestion was a lucky one, I think: Papagayo happens to be two time zones away.

The Miserable Failure

The Mission: A mental health escape on a $750-per-night budget

Score: 2/10

“I need a total mental reset,” I confessed to ChatGPT. “Can you find me a great yoga retreat in a luxurious resort, for May?” The query was rooted in wishful thinking: It’s a question for which I’d love to know the answer—if time away from my family (and work) were even halfway possible.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT made the whole premise feel even more outlandish (sigh) when it recommended I head to the remote destination spa Ananda in the Himalayas or to a few posh spots in Bali—so very Eat, Pray, Love, I thought.

I rephrased the question: Anything in Europe or the Caribbean? Sure, it said, and spouted off resorts in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

I started afresh. “I need a total mental reset,” I reiterated. “Where should I go on vacation?” This time, I got a slightly better-rounded set of suggestions, all destinations rather than resorts. (Costa Rica came up again; I should really just take that trip.) But I wanted hotel recommendations, so the bot came back with classics: Ranch Malibu, SHA Wellness Clinic, Kamalaya Koh Samui.

“My budget is $750 per night,” I followed up. “Do any of these work?”

What ensued was pure comedy. “Yes, there are some options that would work with your $750 per night budget,” it told me. “Here are some examples.” The Ranch Malibu typically costs $1,050 per night, it said, but a cheaper package might bring the price to $1,114.

SHA works out to $826 per night. And at Como Shambhala, in Bali, terrace suites start at $815 per night. “This means that you could stay in a Terrace Suite for less than $750 per night,” it explained. I don’t think it was being sarcastic.

The In Between

The Mission: A crowd-free trip to Europe

Score: 5/10

Here’s a trip everyone is asking me about: “How do I do Europe this August without the crowds?” I relayed the question to ChatGPT. Its answers were generally sensible: Scandinavia, Portugal and Turkey were all on the list. I wondered about the latter and pressed further.

“Isn’t Istanbul crowded in August?” I asked. “What’s the weather like?” It answered my questions with standard information that I might find in the front section of a guidebook.

Ditto when I asked about cultural experiences: I got low-hanging fruit, such as going to a hammam or taking a cooking class, without specific recommendations.

But when I asked about destinations to visit in Turkey beyond Istanbul, ChatGPT got creative. Sure, it gave me a few obvious answers like Cappadocia and Bodrum, but it also suggested Antalya and Trabzon, a small but picturesque city on the Black Sea that I had never heard about and couldn’t find written up in any travel magazine.

The Verdict

Am I likely to go to Trabzon or to recommend it to others? I can’t say so. I just don’t know enough. And neither does ChatGPT.

While the engine recommended a few markets where I could theoretically buy handicrafts and artisanal foods, as well as a handful of the city’s higher-end hotels, it was never going to make me feel confident booking a trip to an unknown spot halfway around the world.

Given its inability to do basic math, AI doesn’t command enough trust for me to embrace recommendations that entail such high stakes.

Which brings me to a point that I don’t see changing soon. When it comes to travel, it doesn’t make sense to trust anything automated or generic: That’s why we still find ourselves going back to the pros.

What we’re looking for is happiness, right? This means something different to each of us.

Yet, as a preliminary planning tool, chatting with the bot was more satisfying than taking to Google and clicking on endless slideshows offering the best hotels in so-and-so places.

When it works, ChatGPT’s randomness fosters a sense of discovery—which is what travel planning is all about.

And when it doesn’t, well, at least it makes you laugh. The catch: You’ll have to do a lot more Googling to find out which one’s which.

Updated: 4-14-2023

How To Fly To The Hamptons For $1 This Summer

First, you’ll need to spend $4,495 to join Tailwind Air’s brand-new members club, Fast Lane Club Plus. And then get a little lucky.

This summer, you may be able to fly to the Hamptons for as little as $1. It will take some luck and an upfront investment to unlock such a steal. But it will be possible.

The deal is built into a new membership program from Tailwind Air, a small fleet of amphibious Cessna eight-seaters that flies from Manhattan’s Skyport (NYS), on East 23rd St., to East Hampton, New York (HTO); Boston Harbor’s Fan Pier (BNH); Provincetown (PVC) and Nantucket (ACK) in Massachusetts; as well as several other destinations.

Called Fast Lane Club Plus, the program costs $4,495 per year to join and includes unlimited discounted seats on scheduled flights among all nine destinations the airline serves, plus last-minute access to unsold seats for a buck.

“Our system won’t let us sell these tickets for free,” explains the company’s co-founder and executive vice president, Peter Manice. “We’re required by law to collect certain required federal taxes.” Hence the nominal price tag, which is typically a $1 fare with approximately $4 in additional taxes.

The membership—a twist on a conventional loyalty program—was inspired in part by Frontier Airlines, which this year announced an all-you-can-fly annual pass that costs $1,999. That program allows users to cash in on free domestic flights that depart within 24 hours or international flights leaving within 10 days.

Like Frontier, Tailwind sees its club as a way to move unsold inventory. Reservations for the $1 seats will open up between 24 to 36 hours of departure.

“The program is certainly not for everybody,” Manice says. “If you need to be somewhere on a specific day, you’re not going to want to roll the dice this way. But if you have personal flexibility to pick and choose when you want to fly, it’s going to be a great value.”

Manice anticipates last-minute availability will be greatest between New York and Boston, a 70-minute, twice-daily route frequented by business travelers.

“Maybe you’re the boss and you can choose when to come in, or maybe you’re a retiree coming down to Manhattan to see your daughter spontaneously,” says Manice. “We’re running these flights anyway, so we might as well get more people on them.”

It should also be easy to get a deal if you’re flying between Boston and Nantucket, a new daily route that will be building its audience from scratch this summer.

Regardless of the destination, it’s worth noting that Tailwind’s Cessnas are small planes which means they have small cargo holds. Regular passengers are restricted to 20 pounds of carry-on luggage; Fast Lane Club Plus members are allotted 30 lbs as an added courtesy.

And while members can book one companion seat on any Tailwind flight, Tailwind will cap those bookings to three flights per friend. (In other words, you can bring a single guest on any flight, but your partner could only come three times before they’d have to get their own membership.)

If you need to plan further out, “member rates” represent savings of 34% to 66%, depending on the route. The cheapest two are Manhattan to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Boston to Plymouth, Massachusetts—they cost $35 each way (compared to $75 for nonmembers). Manhattan to East Hampton or Provincetown, by contrast, is $695 each way (compared to regular rates of $1,095 to $1,195).

Flights between Manhattan and Boston are the most steeply discounted, running $295 each way (nonmembers would pay $895). The rates are valid until at least Sept. 30, without specified blackout dates.

As for scoring that $1 seat to the Hamptons?

“There will certainly be flights with availability there,” Manice says. The trick will be figuring out when. “If you’re wanting to go out to East Hampton 4 o’clock on a Friday, I’d venture to guess that’s a pretty big crapshoot,” he says with a laugh. “Wednesdays may be more likely.”

Updated: 4-18-2023

Ultrarich Hamptons Residents Surge 2,700% In Summer Wealth Migration

The number of high-net-worth, year-round residents in cities like Miami, Cape Town and Napa is dwarfed by those who pop in for occasional visits.

Scores of megarich people own homes in Naples, Florida. But don’t count on bumping into them on the golf course on an off-season Tuesday.

The west coast Florida city counts 24 centimillionaires among its year-round residents. But more than 100 own homes there and use them as occasional crash pads, especially in cold-weather months, according to a new report from New World Wealth and Henley & Partners, firms that study wealth.

That number is dwarfed by seasonal hotspots like the Hamptons in New York. More than 700 superrich flock to second homes there, usually during peak summertime season. That swells the ranks of wealthy residents by 2,700%, in contrast to the 25 living there full time, according to the report.

New World Wealth, a South Africa-based firm, analyzed information from 2022 on people with $100 million in investable assets and, for the first time, pulled together a sampling of US, European and African cities.

The study spotlights the dramatic influx of wealth during peak holiday months as the world’s rich decamp to second homes.

“It’s always been an argument around wealth stats about how many people actually live in a city and how many have homes there,” said Andrew Amoils, head of research at New World Wealth.

The figures are often of interest to companies and representatives who want to attract high-net-worth clients, such as luxury retail firms, investment advisers, city planners and policymakers, said Sarah Nicklin, a spokeswoman for Henley & Partners.

One of the more dramatic influxes of wealth occurs in Aspen. Only six centimillionaires live in the ski paradise full-time, while more than 200 come in for a seasonal visit — a more than 3,000% increase, the firm said. In fact, so many Aspen newbies are moving in that the town has been dubbed “Wall Street West.”

The ultrarich are also retreating in droves to second homes on Lake Como, Italy; Saint Tropez, France; Lugano, Switzerland; and Cape Town.

More than 800 centimillionaires are sitting on real estate in Miami and the island of Miami Beach, compared with about 160 who live there year-round.

Some of those 800 may also be counted in the figures for Aspen or the other cities if they also spend time in their homes there, Amoils said. In Paris, there are more than 300 ultra-rich homeowners but only 126 who live in the city of light full time.

Meanwhile, tiny Carmel-by-the-Sea, which has only 3,196 residents according to 2021 US Census figures, includes more than 150 ultra rich homeowners. Only 40 of them are full-time residents.

Updated: 7-12-2023

Flights Are Getting Cheaper As Summer Travel Season Ramps Up

* Ticket Prices Drop For Third Straight Month As Fuel Costs Fall

* Airlines See Unrelenting Demand For Flights Despite Inflation

The cost of a plane ticket plunged in the early days of the summer travel season, continuing a retreat as airlines benefit from lower jet fuel prices.

US airfares in June fell 8.1% from the prior month, the third consecutive decline and the largest drop since last July, according to figures released on Wednesday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The slide was the second-biggest on a monthly basis since April 2020, when airlines saw travel demand evaporate during the onset of the pandemic.

Compared to last year, June airfares plummeted 18.9%.

The declines come amid falling fuel prices, giving carriers a boost as they prepare for a surge of summer travel expected to rival the record traffic of 2019.

Jet fuel prices have tumbled 57% this year, based on the rate for immediate purchase in New York harbor. Fuel vies with labor as the two largest expenses for airlines, and fares historically have followed the move in fuel prices.

About 275 million people are expected to travel between May 25 and Sept. 4, according to TD Cowen. That’s 7.4% higher than in 2019 and 19% higher than last year.

US passenger counts, which had lagged the record 2019 levels since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, have roughly recovered to pre-pandemic levels in recent months, according to Transportation Safety Administration data.

Surging US travel took hold as the pandemic waned in 2021 and hasn’t let up. The industry thus far has seemed impervious to inflation and economic slowing as consumers continue to use pandemic savings for travel.

Domestic and near-international trips fueled the industry’s early pandemic recovery. More recently, soaring demand for international travel, particularly to Europe, has bolstered the industry as countries have dropped lingering Covid-related restrictions.

Delta Air Lines Inc. is set to be the first major US carrier to report second-quarter results Thursday and provide an update on demand through the peak summer season.

The carrier last month said 55% of its seats offered in the current quarter have already been booked, including 70% for long-haul global flights and 40% on domestic routes.

A group of 11 US carriers are expected to report a record $58 billion in second-quarter revenue, according to Deutsche Bank.

Updated: 7-25-2023

The Post-Covid Travel Boom Is Running Out of Steam

Fare promotions and other signs of weakening domestic demand show business is leveling out for airlines.

European beaches and cities are jam-packed with US tourists eager to venture across the Atlantic now that there are no Covid restrictions to hold them back. But back at home, the air travel recovery appears tapped out.

Alaska Air Group Inc. on Tuesday forecast weaker-than-expected sales growth for the third quarter. Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett told Bloomberg News that travelers’ prioritization of international sojourns is coming at the expense of its primarily domestic routes and is weighing on fares.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines Co. in June ran a promotion for 40% off fares on trips between Aug. 15 and Dec. 14, with the week of Thanksgiving blacked out.

Frontier Airlines last week had a sale for $29 fares on select days of the week through Nov. 15. Spirit Airlines Inc. offered one-way flights for $50 from Aug. 9 through Oct. 4 excluding Friday and Sunday bookings.

Airlines typically run sales when they’re trying to stimulate demand for weaker booking periods, so these promotions don’t bode well for the fall. For the better part of the last 18 months, airlines have had more demand than the country’s aviation infrastructure could handle.

There are still logjams in the airplane manufacturing supply chain that are keeping carriers from taking delivery of the jets they’ve ordered, and other structural capacity constraints, particularly at the busiest airports, are limiting the number of flights they can operate daily. But that balance may be shifting.

While the US consumer has proved much more resilient than many economists and investors had anticipated, credit card charge-offs are on the rise, the savings that this group built up during the pandemic are almost depleted and there are signs that inflation is starting to influence spending decisions.

Pool Corp., a distributor of pool equipment and supplies, cut its full-year guidance last week and said some customers are deferring discretionary purchases such as heaters or upgraded cleaners.

Trips were a worthwhile splurge for many people after pandemic restrictions took long-distance vacations off the table temporarily, but there can’t be much left in the “revenge travel” phenomenon at this point as consumers take stock of their finances.

Average booked rates at Omni Hotels & Resorts properties — which are primarily domestic — have moderated because vacation travelers aren’t splurging on fancier accommodations as frequently, Chairman Peter Strebel said in a June interview.

Like the airlines, the company is relying more on promotions this year to attract leisure travelers than it had to last year, he said.

First-quarter earnings at US airlines were broadly disappointing amid lackluster business demand and a shift in traditional booking patterns that made the already seasonally weak months of January and February even weaker.

The risk is that the pattern repeats once the summer boom in travel has run its course.

The corporate traffic recovery is stuck at about 25% below pre-Covid levels at most airlines; if anything, bookings seem more likely to downshift in the near term as businesses cut costs.

The total operating costs of companies rated investment grade by S&P Global Ratings declined 5.3% in the first quarter, indicating companies reduced day-to-day expenses such as wages and business travel, according to a report this month from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Domestic unit revenue at Delta Air Lines Inc. declined 1% in the second quarter relative to the period a year earlier, while domestic passenger revenue for each seat flown a mile slid 2.4% at United Airlines Holdings Inc.; sales on the same basis at American Airlines Group Inc. fell 3%. American said total unit revenue may fall as much as 6.5% in the current quarter, worse than analysts had anticipated.

The guidance for the second half of the year “seems to show pressure in the domestic market, offset by continued international strength,” TD Cowen analyst Helane Becker wrote in a report.

The average price in June for a US round-trip ticket booked through travel agencies was $555, down about 8% from the period a year earlier, according to data from Airlines Reporting Corp. That’s the third consecutive month that fares have declined relative to 2022 levels.

Fares are still about 8% above 2019 levels, and continued system constraints provide some kind of floor on pricing.

But the airplane deficit in the US isn’t nearly as drastic as it is overseas. Domestic seating capacity has actually recovered to 2019 levels, although it remains about 16 points below where the market would have been if growth hadn’t been disrupted by the pandemic, according to an analysis by Melius Research analyst Conor Cunningham.

In the international market, a larger number of airlines went bankrupt, with low-cost, long-haul carriers — including SAS AB and Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA — hit particularly hard.

During the depths of Covid, the idea of packing people on twin-aisle jets for overseas jaunts seemed like a relic and those wide body planes were put into retirement at a much higher clip than their narrow body brethren that are more popular for domestic routes.

The result is a 39 percentage point deficit in international aircraft supply relative to what is needed to support demand, Cunningham’s analysis shows.

Delta executives have said travel patterns indicate the international summer vacation season is extending well into October in the wake of the pandemic, particularly in the warmer, southern parts of the continent. One look at the heat domes in Europe this month might explain why autumn sounds appealing to some travelers.

The extended international travel season will help counterbalance any shortfall in domestic markets for Delta and United, which also has a substantial overseas business.

But the durability of other post-pandemic travel habits that have helped airlines make up for slower corporate traffic — such as leisure travelers springing for premium seats and taking advantage of work-from-home policies to book more long-weekend trips — is untested in an economic downturn.

Even in Europe, where it seems just about everyone is vacationing this summer, some cracks are emerging in the demand picture. Ryanair Holdings Plc said this week that it might need to offer lower fares in October and November to stimulate demand for seating capacity that’s expected to be 25% above pre-pandemic levels this winter.

“We have noticed in the recent couple of weeks a slight softening in the close-in fares in late June and early July; nothing that I would be overly worried about at the moment,” Ryanair Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said on a call to discuss the company’s quarterly results. But there’s “a degree of customer resistance to the higher fares.”

Whereas last year customers were paying prices well ahead of Ryanair’s budgeted expectations to lock in seats for summer vacations, now “there is a kind of a leveling out,” albeit at an elevated fare relative to 2022, he said.

Leveling out is probably the best way to describe what’s happening in the air travel markets. The airlines aren’t headed back to the pandemic doldrums.

But stocks of the largest carriers have taken off like jet planes in recent weeks, bouncing back from a slump after the regional banking crisis sparked fears of a recessionary pullback in consumer spending.

Shares of Alaska, for example, hit their highest price in more than a year earlier this month. United shares last week touched a more than two-year high. Investors may have stopped worrying about air travel demand a bit too soon.

Updated: 8-3-2023

Airlines Slash Prices To Convince Americans To Vacation Closer To Home

* Lower Fares Could Extend Through Fall To Winter Holidays

* Timing For Move Back To More Domestic Travel Is Uncertain

JetBlue Airways Corp., Alaska Air Group Inc. and other US carriers expected the post-pandemic travel boom to send ticket prices soaring this summer. Instead, they’re getting battered.

Travelers are showing an unusually strong preference for international trips, forcing domestic-focused carriers to discount prices. At the same time, many of them are facing higher costs from new labor contracts, flight disruptions and inflation.

As a result, JetBlue has slashed its yearly outlook. Southwest Airlines Co. and others have signaled they’re under pressure — a reversal from a few months ago when industry leaders promised high demand would endure.

While domestic ticket sales may pick up again in a few months, with holidays encouraging people to take trips closer to home, it’s still been a tough reality check and a sign the end-of-lockdown travel frenzy is cooling for some.

“If you don’t cater to premium, if you can’t bank on loyalty and if you don’t fly internationally, this year’s third quarter is likely to disappoint,” Jamie Baker, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst, said in a report.

There are a number of reasons why travelers have become especially enamored with trips abroad. In particular, looser Covid-19 restrictions mean for the first time in years Americans can visit far-flung destinations without expensive tests and the threat of lengthy quarantines.

The shift has been larger than the industry expected, and occurred after plans to boost available seats were already in motion. That’s weighed on prices.

US round-trip fares are down about 11% compared with 2022 and 2019, and will remain slightly below 2019 levels until the winter holidays begin and carriers are able to boost fares as demand increases, according to booking app Hopper.com.

Adding to the pressure, Frontier Group Holdings Inc., a major discount carrier, is increasing capacity by 23% this quarter, compared to a year ago.

Lower Expectations

The tougher environment was a major reason JetBlue slashed its adjusted profit outlook to between 5 cents and 40 cents a share, from its earlier outlook of as much as $1. It also said it won’t earn as much this quarter as analysts had estimated.

Fares that were “really strong” through June have declined from record levels in 2022, Alaska Airlines said last week, but remain above pre-pandemic prices. It forecast revenue this quarter will be flat to up 3%, with a midpoint below Wall Street’s expectations.

“It’s not that people aren’t traveling, it’s just on the domestic system fares have come in lower than everyone in the industry had expected,” JetBlue Chief Executive Officer Robin Hayes said on a call this week.

Southwest shares tumbled the most in almost a year on July 27 after it warned that higher-than-expected costs would pressure earnings. The Dallas-based carrier this week offered a buy one, get one 50% off fare deal for the first time. The three-day sale was for travel in August and September.

Spirit Airlines Inc., the largest deep discount carrier, on Thursday missed Wall Street’s second-quarter earnings expectations and said in a statement that it would generate total revenue this quarter of $1.3 billion to $1.32 billion, well below the average analyst estimate of $1.52 billion.

“The current setup is simply not favorable to a domestic focused airline,” Spirit CEO Ted Christie said on a call. The executive blamed a “dramatic” demand shift to long-haul international markets not served by the airline and weather-related challenges, adding circumstances are unlikely to change in the near future.

In April, the airline had “sold-out flights every day” to Cancun, Mexico, but conditions are now completely different, Spirit Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein said. “Demand just fell off” starting in June, he told analysts.

The differences between their fortunes and that of global carriers is stark. United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc. each said they would earn more this quarter than analysts expected. The companies, along with American Airlines Group Inc., all improved their full-year forecasts.

Investors appear to be rewarding the global carriers as well, with United shares increasing 40% this year through Wednesday, Delta 36% and American 25%. Alaska and JetBlue are up more modestly, while Southwest has slipped slightly and Frontier has dropped 18%.

Temporary Dip

Hayes and others have tried to soothe investor worries by suggesting the dip in demand could be temporary. Though they’ve stopped short of promising sales will improve after summer vacation season ends.

“We actually believe a lot of the demand is going to spill into the fall, and therefore, we have not made an assumption that this environment changes before we get into the heart of winter,” Frontier Chief Executive Officer Barry Biffle said Tuesday.

“Although I do know that once we get to January, February, it’s a heck of a lot better to be in Florida than it is in most parts of Europe.”

And Wall Street isn’t betting on a rebound. Helane Becker, a TD Cowen analyst, said she was skeptical that domestic demand at JetBlue would recover sufficiently by year-end, and reduced her full-year adjusted earnings outlook for the carrier.

Views by the airlines that demand will swing back “may ultimately prove correct,” Conor Cunningham, a Melius Research analyst, said in a report. “But near-term, as industry capacity is set to ramp and fare sales become increasingly more common, fear on fares will only intensify.”

Updated: 8-4-2023

American Travelers Are Shunning The U.S. For Europe

Domestic ticket fares fall as tourists favor longer trips abroad.

Globe-trotting Americans have packed international flights this summer, leaving behind some domestic-focused airlines.

Americans are flocking to Europe. The allure of international travel has travelers swapping out shorter trips within the U.S. or to some nearby destinations in favor of longer journeys.

The number of passengers on domestic flights slid 2% in July from the same month in 2019, while the number of passengers on trans-Atlantic routes increased 14%, according to Airlines for America, a trade group that represents several major airlines.

Airline ticket prices reflect the shift. Domestic fares are down 11% from last year and tracking below 2019 levels, while international fares have risen 11% from a year ago and are up 28% from 2019, according to Hopper, a booking app.

The pivot is cutting into revenue for some U.S.-focused airlines that haven’t seen demand build to the heights it reached last summer, according to airline executives. To cope, carriers are rejiggering schedules and trying out new routes to better match the emerging patterns.

“The current setup is simply not favorable to a domestic-focused airline,” Spirit Airlines Chief Executive Officer Ted Christie said Thursday as the carrier reported weaker-than-expected earnings.

Dan Plotinsky and his family usually fly to New England to visit relatives over the summer. With his oldest daughter graduating from high school, they instead took a family trip to Europe. Plotinsky’s wife and daughters started in France, and he met them in London.

“I think we just decided, let’s try something new,” he said.

JetBlue Airways cautioned this week that it might see a loss in the third quarter and pared its guidance for the full year. Executives at Spirit, Frontier and Alaska Air have said in recent weeks that U.S. airfares have cooled as more of their customers have spent their vacation budgets on trips abroad.

“When we lose 5% of our people to go to Europe, that’s a lot of customers,” Frontier Chief Executive Barry Biffle said Tuesday.

Hotels are seeing a similar switch. Marriott International said this week that per room international revenue is expected to climb as much as 30% this year, fueling growth while the U.S. and Canada increase more moderately. Hyatt Hotels said 27% of second-quarter rooms revenue at its hotels in Europe was from U.S. travelers, up from 21% in the same period in 2019.

“We’re seeing Americans broaden where they’re going,” Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian said Thursday.

Travel has been on a two-year upswing as easing Covid-19 restrictions unleashed a torrent of demand that has been stronger and more resilient than many industry observers expected.

This summer’s domestic slowdown is one of the first indications that the frenzied pace of the rebound could be moderating.

Some airline executives and industry observers said the international travel surge is a delayed echo of the domestic boom that played out last year.

Months after travel within the U.S. had started to pick up, trips abroad were still hemmed in by lingering rules requiring testing or vaccination records that made some travelers uneasy about planning expensive, complicated trips to far-flung locales while the rules were still in flux.

The U.S. government dropped rules requiring air travelers to take Covid-19 tests before flying to the U.S. in June 2022, after some consumers had already set travel plans for that summer.

“That’s really late in the game,” said Mike Daher, who leads Deloitte’s U.S. Transportation, Hospitality and Services practice. “Obviously, this summer, that wasn’t the case.”

Travelers snapped up seats on international flights months in advance this year. Delta Air Lines said in April that it had already received three-quarters of its summer international bookings. Delta and United Airlines both bulked up their European schedules ahead of the summer rush.

Domestic demand is still decent, but it is tough to live up to last summer, said Vik Krishnan, an aviation consultant at McKinsey. “2022 was pretty much the high watermark, one might argue, for what people would seem to be willing to pay for air travel domestically,” he said.

The change played out abruptly this spring. Cancún, in Mexico, was one of the most popular destinations throughout the pandemic. As recently as April, flights were sold out almost every day and fares were high, Spirit Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein said Thursday. Less than two months later, that reversed.

“The demand just fell off,” he said.

With many business travelers still sidelined, airlines are increasingly subject to the whims of fickle vacationers, and they are still trying to figure out how to adjust. Carriers are culling flights on off-peak days such as Tuesday and Wednesday, and shifting their networks to cater to leisure fliers.

Southwest Airlines said recently that it will pull flights from business-heavy markets—think Chicago to Columbus, Ohio—and add service to destinations such as Sarasota, Fla., Tampa and Phoenix.

JetBlue said recently that it plans to try different routes in an effort to tap in to new veins of demand. The airline in 2021 started flying across the Atlantic, but service is still limited. “Other airlines have talked about how strong Europe is. We’re seeing that too. We just don’t have very much of it,” CEO Robin Hayes said.

Airline executives are debating how long consumers will give priority to European vacations over domestic travel. Delta and United both said they are expecting demand, at least for destinations in southern Europe, to extend into fall, longer than usual.

Other carriers, including Spirit, said they expect patterns to snap back to normal in the coming months as summer wanes.

Frontier’s Biffle said: “We have not made an assumption that this environment changes before we get into the heart of winter.

Although I do know that once we get to January, February, it’s a heck of a lot better to be in Florida than it is in most parts of Europe.”

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