This article is written by Dan Richards, the CEO of Global Rescue, the leading provider of medical, evacuation and travel risk management services including COVID-19, and a member of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Travelers are crossing their fingers in the hopes that the end of the pandemic is near and the return to normal is on the visible horizon. But questions still linger.
What will the next year of travel look like? Will there be a new travel "normal?" Did the pandemic change destination preferences among travelers? What new hurdles should trip takers prepare to overcome?
Travel concern is significant but is steadily being overwhelmed by people's desire to travel. There is enormous pent-up demand for leisure travel that will take place as soon as countries reduce or remove border restrictions, which has started and is expected to accelerate in November. As travel resumes, trip-takers will need to prepare for new challenges and choices.
Our data shows travelers adopting a new approach to travel. When border closings are not an issue, our data shows traveler deal-breakers include overcrowded destinations, mass events and regions with insufficient medical facilities.
Those traveler attitudes are why most of the respondents to the Global Rescue Travel Safety survey say they will take their first multi-day international trip since the pandemic started by March 2022. But the pandemic has produced new destination preferences based on traveler perceptions of safety or remoteness and hurt other locales due to fears among would-be travelers about catching COVID-19. Leading destinations for travelers going into the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 include Canada, Mexico and Italy. They are avoiding China, India, Brazil and cruises. Three out of four travelers say they do not feel safe from COVID-19 on a cruise.
One of the biggest pandemic revelations among travelers was the limitation of travel insurance and the value of having stand-alone medical assistance and an evacuation safety net that includes COVID-19.
According to an article in The New York Times, many travel insurance policies failed to cover COVID-19-related trip disruptions, cancellations and traveler evacuations when the pandemic began. The Chicago Tribune reported that travel insurance limitations that left trip-takers angry over refused claims became clear during the coronavirus outbreak.
Since then, many in the travel industry have adopted new policies to increase customer trust. For example, airlines provide vouchers for canceled trips, and Vail Resorts' Epic ski season passes come with free coverage protecting pass-holders if a covered event, like COVID-19, prevents them from skiing for all or some of their ski season.
In other cases, individual travelers were responsible for their required self-quarantine. "In some nations, ex-pats [were] not eligible for public health care, and private health insurance policies [did] not cover the expense of testing if the test [was] not considered medically essential," according to NPR.
The pandemic brought to light the limitations of travel insurance and the importance of having a separate medical support and evacuation safety net that includes medical evacuation and transport for COVID-19. It is equally critical for travelers to understand that emergency rescue and evacuation membership services are not only for pandemics but for any traveler for any emergency, whether it's due to a natural disaster, civil unrest or simply needing emergency help when you're traveling.
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