Spring break has a new look: older and socially distant
Last year, COVID-19 crashed the spring-break party, but not before mass gatherings on the beaches of Florida, Texas and Mexico flouted travel warnings and social-distancing advice. Ski areas had to shut down during one of the busiest periods of the season. Student trips for enrichment and sport were suddenly canceled.
Now, a year later, spring break is showing signs of life again, albeit in very different forms than the past.
“We don’t want to see a repeat of last year,” said Steve Hayes, president and CEO of Visit St. Pete/clearwater, which promotes tourism in that Gulf Coast area, where crowds jammed the beaches in the spring. “What we want is a picture that says, what a difference a year makes.”
Stricter limits on group gatherings, mask mandates and restrictions at hotels, restaurants and bars in popular spring destinations diminish the odds of a repeat.
Virtual classrooms and workplaces have freed some students and families from the traditional springbreak schedule, a shift that may dilute 2021 traffic.
With colleges shrinking spring break and the arrival of the vaccine, largely prioritized to older Americans, the 2021 spring breaker may be significantly older than the stereotyped one.
“At least in 2021, I think we’ll see more seniors as spring breakers as they are the first to have access to the vaccine, and by March and April, they’ll have the second dose,” said Joel Holland, CEO of Harvest Hosts, a membership platform that offers recreational-vehicle camping spots in nontraditional settings, such as breweries and farms. Of 3,000 members age 65 and older recently surveyed, about threequarters said they planned to travel more this year than last, and almost 58 percent said they planned to travel more in 2021 than in pre-pandemic 2019.
Whether for seniors or college-age people, spring break will be quieter this year. The seasonal escape “is pivoting to domestic drive markets, private vacation rentals or nothing at all,” said Erika Richter, senior communications director for the American Society of Travel Advisors, noting that multigenerational family trips are trending.
The seasonal itch to travel, of course, runs headlong into advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to postpone travel in order to avoid contracting or spreading COVID-19.
“My first inclination is to say please stay put given the transmission rates and different variants of the virus that are circulating,” said Dr. Darlene Bhavnani, an associate professor and infectious-disease epidemiologist at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.
For those bent on traveling, she added, “a safer way would be not to stray too far from home, travel with those in your household, keep it to a car ride” and consider renting an Airbnb or camping.
From testing protocols and travel affidavits to uncrowded beaches and bird-watching blinds with capacity caps, here’s how spring break may look in 2021.
From raucous weeks to recovery days
Many colleges and universities have crimped spring break this year. Boston College delayed the start of spring semester to late January and canceled its scheduled spring break week in March, offering a midweek day off on March 3. The University of Michigan eliminated its spring break and added two “wellbeing break” days during the winter term. Throughout the current semester, students residing at Yale
University must seek permission to travel outside the greater New Haven, Conn., area for more than 24 hours and will have five individual days off between February and April.
Even institutions in break-centric Florida, including the University of Miami and Florida State University, have canceled spring break.
“I think they are eager to redress some of the impressions last year when students were going wild,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. “As we saw after last year’s spring break, Miami became an epicenter for COVID-19, and the people who were dying were not college students but the elderly and those most vulnerable.”
Superspreaders aren’t welcome
For those college students who still have the opportunity to travel, many popular destinations have made it clear that mass gatherings are not welcome.
In St. Petersburg and Clearwater, cities in Florida, frequent signage promotes hand washing, spreading out and mask wearing, and ambassadors called “Sunshine Steward Street Teams” hand out gift cards from local businesses to people wearing their masks correctly or otherwise following the rules.
In Los Cabos, Mexico, beaches are limited to 40 percent capacity by police, nightclubs remain shuttered and a midnight curfew extends to restaurants and bars in towns as well as in resorts.
On South Padre Island, no permits for stages and activities have been issued. Groups are limited to 10 and beach umbrellas must be spaced 15 feet apart with only two chairs.
“We are calling it ‘coastal distancing’ with our sunshine, wind and water being a natural way to keep families in their own bubble,” said Ed Caum, director of the island’s convention and visitor’s bureau, in written responses to questions.
Testing to travel
Spring bookings in domestic destinations like Colorado may benefit from new testing requirements for American travelers returning from abroad. Since the new rules were announced, Isla Bella Beach Resort in the Florida Keys reported getting 20 reservations from one travel agent alone, who moved the bookings, mostly for February and March, from Jamaica.
Testing isn’t just for the Cancún-bound. In places such as Chicago and Maine, a negative COVID-19 test before arrival enables visitors from most states to skip quarantines.
Colorado’s Pitkin County, which is home to Aspen and four major ski areas, has a Traveler Affidavit that requires most overnight visitors to receive a negative COVID-19 test three days before arrival in lieu of a 10-day quarantine. Since implementing the system in mid-december, the county has received nearly 60,000 affidavits.
You don’t have to stray far
Mental health experts stress that you don’t have to stray far from home to gain from taking a break.
“The benefits of seeing something different, of taking a break from the usual responsibilities and routines, stimulates thinking and creativity, and gives us a fresh new perspective on what we face in day-today life,” said Lynn Bufka, a psychologist and senior director at the American Psychological Association.
One way to do that this spring is to learn a new skill, such as taking a recreational classes. Staycation offers abound this spring, too.
In the pandemic, vacation-home rentals, which offer privacy and control, have been popular. At Homes & Villas by Marriott International, current bookings from early March through mid-april are triple compared with last year at this time.
Breaks that say ‘spring’
Americans also have seized on road trips and camping as safe forms of travel — the travel search engine Kayak said flight searches for March are down 76 percent year over year. Campspot, a platform for booking campgrounds and RV sites, glamping tents and cabins, said reservations are up 50 percent over last year to date.
Spring breaks on the ground offer opportunities to fully explore seasonal renewal beyond the famed cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. — its annual festival March 20 to April 11 will be adjusted for safety, including no parade. About 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, a seasonal explosion of orange poppies and lavender lupine paint the nearly 250,000-acre grassland preserve Carizzo Plain National Monument — there is camping in the park and accommodations (from $139) at the 21-room Cuyama Buckhorn resort in New Cuyama).
Spring is also a season of bird migrations. In central Nebraska every March and early April, more than 600,000 sandhill cranes regularly convene in the Platte River Valley. There are virtual tours as well as in-person visits to viewing blinds with restrictions this year that include reduced capacity ($50 a person, reservations required).
Look for migrations of shorebirds in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in southern New Mexico. Some 500 species have been recorded in the nine sites that comprise the World Birding Center in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Waterbirds, raptors and warblers are among the great diversity of birds migrating through the Point Reyes National Seashore, about 40 miles north of San Francisco.
Whether it’s a trip of a day or a week, caution is the theme of spring break 2021.
“For travelers, the experience will be totally different,” said Rodrigo Esponda, managing director of the Los Cabos Tourism Board, which wants to be known for its safety protocols this year.