We have just entered travel’s ‘Boring Twenties’

Less spontaneity, more QR codes – our holidays are under threat from a new era of puritanism, says Greg Dickinson

This week Airbnb announced the party is officially over. In August 2020 the holiday rental company banned party houses to prevent knees-ups in its properties at a time when social mingling was outlawed. Two years on, Airbnb announced it is “officially codifying the ban” after a 44 per cent yearon-year drop in party complaints.

Which, when you think about it, is fair enough. Banning party houses will mean less bad press for a company with an already complicated public image. But what’s interesting about Airbnb’s party ban is that this was a measure brought in to help curb the spread of Covid-19, then the measure never went away. Now it still suits Airbnb rather nicely, so it has made it a permanent policy – and it is not alone. In fact, it seems we are entering a new era of post-pandemic puritanism.

Let’s take Japan. This month the country reopened for tourism, but only to foreign visitors entering on a group tour. For many years Japan has struggled with overtourism, a topic of passionate public debate; it even published an “etiquette manual” for tourists in 2015. But when the borders closed during the pandemic, the problem went away and locals liked the change. Keeping tourist numbers on a tight leash is an example of a politically desirable end achieved through the guise of Covid cautiousness.

At restaurants, both in the UK and overseas, we continue to be encouraged to access menus via a QR code, even after Covid cases plummeted and evidence suggests the risk of catching the virus through surfaces or objects is one in 10,000, according to the CDC, similar to the odds of being struck by lightning. What this means is that we are forced to spend the first 10 minutes at a bar or restaurant fiddling on our phones, when all we want to do is say “dos cervezas, por favor”. But for the restaurant, the technology is now in place, it stops the faff of bills and change, allows people to order as and when they wish, and means they can keep the staff count down. Why would they go back?

Museums and galleries are at it, too. From the Louvre to the British Museum to the Taj Mahal, cultural institutions introduced booking systems during the pandemic to control numbers. Fast forward to 2022 and many still require or urge visitors to book a time slot before arrival. For the tourist, this strips back the pleasure of spontaneity that we enjoyed before the pandemic. For the museum or gallery, it allows them to keep tabs on numbers and to distribute footfall throughout the day: a faculty of control, conveniently kept in place after the Covid world has gone away.

Restrictions continue on the rails, too. In November 2020, ScotRail introduced an alcohol ban on its trains to “support the public-health measures put in place by the Scottish Government to tackle coronavirus”. Fast forward to July 2022 and the measure remains in place, despite the fact that Scotland has ended all Covid measures. Stephen Elliot, ScotRail security and crime manager, said: “There is no timeframe to change the policy, but will keep it under review.” So you’d best keep those tins of gin and tonic closed, or else you may be asked to disembark in a remote corner of the Highlands.

The list goes on: B&Bs inexplicably no longer serving breakfast, hotels with empty or depleted minibars, cafés refusing cash, restaurants only opening over weekends, hotels pushing back their check-in times and pulling forward the check-out times to allow for “deep cleaning”.

When governments around the world stripped back Covid restrictions in the first half of 2022 there were hopes and whispers of an impending “Roaring Twenties”. If things don’t change soon, the “Boring Twenties” might feel more apt.

Airbnb has banned party houses – and the company is not the only killjoy in our midst