Coronavirus Travel: 10 Steps to Follow Before Rethinking Your Plans

Tourists in Ella Si Lanka

Why We're Still Traveling

by JESSE ASHLOCK

March 4, 2020

In the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, the solution isn't avoiding trips—it's being smart about them.

In fact, they rarely are. To choose a very recent example, during the height of the Australian bushfires, smart travelers recognized that this was not a time to avoid Australia but an opportunity to book a trip. Much of this vast country was unaffected and remained open for business, and because the fires had ravaged the tourism industry, an individual’s travel dollars were that much more meaningful to the local economy. In a place like Australia (or the Brazilian Amazon, where fires burned for much of last year) that has slashed its environmental funding, that money is critical for conservation programs. As an added benefit for the traveler, the crowds were thinner. If you’re still looking for a big trip to book in 2020, Australia is an excellent choice. The same goes for the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean countries affected by hurricanes in recent years.
The coronavirus is more complicated, because it’s ongoing, and we don’t yet know what’s going to happen next, or where. Travelers, like markets, aren’t big fans of uncertainty. Still, though, the same principles apply: Don’t avoid travel—be smart about how you travel. That means what it always means: traveling consciously, with awareness and respect for the place you’re visiting. In the case of this epidemic, it means taking State Department advisories and the advice of industry professionals seriously, and of course exercising the common sense precautions every major news outlet has been offering. It also means recognizing the valiant work the travel industry is doing to respond to the situation, from airlines relaxing their cancellation policies to cruise ships screening all passengers before boarding. We are all in this together—travelers and travel providers, Chinese and Iranians and Europeans and Americans—and recognizing our common interests as members of the global community is one of the pillars of being an astute traveler.



Our readers—you—are, by definition, smart travelers. We’ve seen this borne out time and time again, most recently in a reader survey we just conducted which revealed that four out of five of you have trips planned in the next six months, and that only a tiny percentage of you have cancelled planned travel due to the coronavirus. The world is not off-limits; we all just need to understand where we’re going. To help you make those decisions as intelligently as possible, we pledge to continue covering the coronavirus as it relates to responsible travel, because we believe that informed travelers are better global citizens.
Even as the planet grows ever more interconnected, there’s been a movement in many parts of the world over the last few years away from the very idea of connectedness. Nobody would argue we’re not living in trying times, but our challenges are best faced collectively, and there’s no better tool for promoting human understanding and shared purpose than travel. Let’s not let Covid-19 drive us all further into our corners.
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