WHEN ARE WE TRAVELLING AGAIN?

POST ANDYCAIRNS

As much as I’ve complained in the past about time away from home, eating the same room service, delays and airport inconvenience, I’m really getting the itch to travel again. At the moment, I have no trips planned and it’s starting to look like there won’t be any until the middle of 2021. Is anyone else feeling this?

➜ SWISSDIVER

I miss air travel as well. That little smell of kerosene when boarding… how low our expectations have become! Long-haul will probably have to wait.

➜ DAVIDSMITH2

As it stands, I have a trip to London in December and a trip to Sao Tome at New Year in the diary. But I am not at all confident it will be possible to do either. Trying to guess what might happen in 2021 is already proving to be an art rather than a science, because different parts of the world appear to be going through differing phases of dealing with the pandemic. Am I missing the travel? Absolutely. Both on a professional and personal level. Work is suffering because of the inability to meet people face-toface and validate information with my own eyes. Sanity is suffering because of a lack of holidays. And my kitchen is suffering from a lack of duck breasts, goose fat, parsnips, Marmite and Stilton.

➜ ANDYCAIRNS

Glad it’s not just me. My biggest fear is that companies (especially my clients) will have a knee-jerk reaction and stop (or vastly reduce) business travel even into 2021-22. I can technically do my job remotely but everyone gets far more out of the in-person meetings.

➜ SANRAN

The only “positive” thing of late is that, since we saved so much money on regular flights and only do the essential ones, we now fly with private jets. I witnessed how much easier measures are when you arrive [in this way], at least in Italy, Spain, England and Brazil.

➜ TRAMOR01

Both feet are extremely itchy to travel again. By now I would normally have been out to Vietnam and Thailand at least once, with my usual end of the year/ pre-Christmas trip already booked.

Talking to friends and colleagues in Asia, it seems like it’s anyone’s guess when the region will open up again to foreigners, so I’m all but writing off 2020, and not seriously looking at getting anywhere near the region before spring 2021.

➜ FAROFLYER

I wonder if a big part of my enjoyment of travel has been optimising visits to multiple customers in the same country, and finding the best deals for hotels and visiting trade shows. In the future I can see my travel being significantly reduced to attending maybe four shows a year. The biggest lesson I have learnt is not to book flights or hotels in advance as travel is so uncertain.

➜ ESSELLE

I am long retired but made on average two flights a week, every week, for about 26 years when I was working. Our last flight was Qantas-Air France in first class coming back from Melbourne in December 2019. Since then we have had to cancel a lot of trips, which is frustrating. The bigger frustration is not being able to plan anything with any degree of certainty; lots of time on our hands and ideas as to what we would like to do, but no confidence that anything we book will be operating.

➜ TOMINSCOTLAND

I took my first trip since February and found the experience strange. I prepared carefully in terms of the itinerary, where we would stay and eat, and so on. In fact, it all went very well, we had a great time, the weather was fantastic, and we met up with friends and family on a multi-destination trip. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention where! England by car, of course.

➜ INFREQUENTFLYER

I just returned from a ten-day break in Croatia. It was an absolute delight in every way, and the airport and flying experience was a lot more pleasurable and humane than at any other time. The flight was 100 per cent full there and back, out in economy class, back in business. Heathrow was busy but obviously nothing like normal. The lounge was lovely as it was quiet and I much prefer the app-ordering for food and drinks. No scrum to board, no don’t-you-know-who-I-am types. Everyone was wearing face coverings and was respectful of each other’s space. The biggest miracle was on landing. Everybody stayed seated as instructed – no mass scramble for bags the second the wheels touched earth. It was the most civilised flying experience I have had.

‘Trying to guess what might happen in 2021 is already proving to be an art rather than a science’