If the sudden arrival of Covid jolted your travel plans five years ago, you are not alone.
I was visiting family in Honolulu when the shutdowns began: First restaurants and bars closed, then nonessential stores, finally the beaches.
As stories of stranded travelers filled the news, I panicked and jumped on a plane back to New York (looking back, I realize this seems like a dubious decision). My connecting flight from Chicago had four passengers and six cabin crew members — all maskless. At LaGuardia, dazed employees sat on the frozen baggage carousels. One worker wheeled my suitcase out from an office. It was the only checked bag.
On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California issued a statewide stay-at-home order, seeking to limit the spread of the disease by curtailing nonessential travel. By March 28, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had issued a domestic travel advisory for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Nonessential travel had mostly halted by the end of the month. In April 2020, only 3.28 million passengers flew globally, a far cry from the 86.96 million in April 2019. The world would not see that many airline passengers again until the summer of 2022.
Since then, we’ve ridden a roller coaster of mask mandates, social distancing, vaccines, breakthrough infections, “revenge travel” and overtourism. Travel has rebounded to prepandemic levels, according to the World Economic Forum, but Covid — and long Covid — is also still very much with us. Covid has killed at least seven million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and it’s still a leading cause of death in the United States.
As the fifth anniversary of the pandemic approached, we asked readers to share how Covid changed the way they travel. The 762 responses we received tended to fall into five major categories: They were jumping into “life is short” travel, making up for lost time; they were focusing on family trips; they were limiting travel to avoid danger, cost, discomfort or crowds; or they weren’t traveling at all, often because of illness or fear.
The responses included life transformations of all kinds. Sara Burnett, 41, of Alpine, Texas, wrote that she spent four months in Egypt learning to free dive, and now dives for Team U.S.A. “I went from doing nothing to extreme sport athlete,” she wrote.
Paula Lauer had the opposite experience. “Covid broke me,” she began. Ms. Lauer, 60, of East Dundee, Ill., was once married to an airline employee and traveled widely. Even though she has not had Covid, she wrote, “I haven’t been anywhere or had the courage to fly or take public transportation at all.”
Most readers fell between those extremes, with about 13 percent of respondents saying they still wore masks when traveling, compared with the 4 percent of Americans overall who say they regularly wear masks, according to a Pew Research Center survey of about 9,500 adults released last month.
Several respondents said to minimize contact with others, they flew only in business or first class even if that meant taking fewer trips. Some preferred booking entire homes through home-sharing sites, and quite a few others favored driving over flying, not least because they could easily bring their pets.
‘The world could stop’
A large number of respondents expressed a pandemic-driven zeal to make up for lost time. Far-flung places like Antarctica, the Galápagos Islands and Bhutan came up over and over, as did less remote destinations like Peru, Japan, France, Spain and Italy. Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift concerts also made appearances.
“The one-two punch of experiencing metastatic cancer in 2018 and the pandemic lockdowns in 2020” prompted Jodi Eichler-Levine, 46, Allentown, Pa., to visit the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where, she wrote, “for a few minutes I watched a sea turtle in the water all by myself, hovering above it with my snorkel, and I thought about old things that survive somehow anyway.”
A long lockdown left Joseph Ting, 55, of Brisbane, Australia, with at least 100 days of unused leave. To make good use of that time, he planned out lengthy trips by pinning a loop of string on a globe: “It’s now about long marathon trips that loop in one outbound direction and the reverse in a homebound loop.” This strategy, he writes, “unifies all intermediate, origin and home destinations in the tightest, most carbon-friendly way.”
In the spring of 2020, Lauren O’Steen, now 24, of Rock Hill, S.C., was a sophomore in college and was signed up to study abroad that summer. The pandemic, she wrote, “showed me that something big could happen, the world could stop,” and so after graduating in 2022, she deferred law school for a year and hit the road, visiting seven continents and 49 countries. She “took calculated risks, and did things I’d never dreamed of.” (She did eventually make it to law school.)
‘So much travel time together lost’
The lockdowns, inability to see family and friends, and the constant threat of sickness and death prompted many readers to devote themselves to traveling with, and for, loved ones.
“My first trip to Walt Disney World happened when I was 70,” wrote 73-year-old Steve Morus, of Pittsburgh. “I did not think I would ever go for a number of reasons,” he wrote, but after the birth of his first granddaughter, who has a genetic condition called spinal muscular atrophy, and who is “very excited about all things Disney,” he couldn’t resist.
Amy B. Scher, 45, of New York City, now travels mostly with her wife and almost 80-year-old mother, “finding hidden gems and more peaceful moments.” She wrote, “With my mom getting older, and so much travel time together lost, I think more about the memories we make together now.”
The big annual family trip has taken on a new importance for Susan Nelson, 50, of Madison, Wis. But she recalled how one of those, a 2022 house rental in Tuscany with her pandemic pod of six adults and five children, devolved into a Covid ordeal. “We had a glorious first day wandering Lucca, and then, that evening, the first kid started to feel sick and tested positive for Covid the next day,” she wrote. “My husband was housebound for days, wandering the olive groves with a low-grade fever and plucking unripe plums from the trees.” Luckily, everyone recovered in time to enjoy at least part of the vacation.
Mother Nature over the Mona Lisa
Avoiding air travel emerged as a common thread, and not just because of the fear of catching Covid. Many readers cited cramped seats, delays and cancellations, high prices and the fear of crashing after a series of recent air accidents. Some just wanted to avoid crowds.
“I had always prioritized international travel and visiting urban areas, but the pandemic made the first nearly impossible and the second unappealing,” wrote Hayley Hoffman, 34, of Plymouth, Mich. So she began visiting national parks and is at 10 of them and counting. “I would trade visiting the crowded Louvre for a hike in the woods,” she wrote.
Before the pandemic, Chuck Burton, 74, of Mazatlán, Mexico, used to fly to Southeast Asia every year. But once travel shut down, he began to confine his travel “to small, rural inland Mexico.” He discovered the Pueblos Magicos, 177 specially recognized towns across Mexico, and has visited 80 of them. “They are small, clean, safe, beautiful and cheap and are almost never visited by foreigners,” he wrote.
And those who do still fly have often made changes to their routines to stay healthy. “I stay at home the week before leaving for my trip, so I’m less likely to get sick beforehand,” wrote Cassandra Stroud, 35, of Denver. She also avoids connecting flights whenever possible to minimize time spent inside airports.
Still grounded by Covid
As much as Covid had seismic effects on a global scale, it also had a transformative impact on individuals. Millions have lost loved ones, and for some the fear of being infected remains a constant worry. Long Covid also looms large. As many as 17 million adult Americans reported having symptoms of that condition as of March 2024.
Chela Crinnion, 50, of New York City, said she was healthy and active before catching Covid in January 2022, and because of long Covid, she now uses a mobility scooter. “I haven’t been on a plane in five and a half years. I haven’t even left New York,” she wrote.
When she made it to the ocean for the first time since 2019, at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, she wrote, it “felt cathartic and beautiful.” On another visit to the Rockaways, she raced on her scooter with two kids in the skate park. “Moments like that are rare,” she wrote, “but when they happen, it’s like I get to reconnect with my healthy former self in some small way.”
Another former frequent traveler, Brooke Stover, 44, of Seattle, wrote that she and her family no longer flew because of the risk of catching Covid. But she had a suggestion for the airlines: “If there was just one flight a month or one flight a quarter that had all staff and patrons masked, I would be on it in a heartbeat!”
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