It would now appear, given the gift of perspective, that in a recent report from the USA there are some folks blocking our lane as we drive toward the light at the end of the travel tunnel.
The Travel Weekly USA report by Richard Turen is enlightening and could be seen to be reflected in Australia, so please read on.
Turen says this is making travel planning and the certainty of departure dates more problematic than might have been imagined when we first heard that the world would soon be traveling again with four major vaccines in production.
Everything seemed to be on track for a quick reversal of the travel fortunes — until it wasn’t.
It turns out that planning one’s business on the assumption that everyone will soon be vaccinated and off to live dreams delayed might have been an oversimplification. The fact is that even now, as airlines add flights and hotels spruce up their rooms, we are realizing that America is not a land where simple, even simply logical, solutions are easily embraced. Not by everyone and, perhaps, not by enough of us to ever achieve herd immunity. It turns out that we are not a herd heading off in the same direction. And as we’re just finding out, neither is much of the industrialized world.
The latest projections call for airline schedule changes to affect a likely 25% to 30% of all domestic flights in the next 24 months. State Department travel advisory levels change, pilot shortages are accommodated and destination border crossing demands change on a dime.
We can beat ourselves up over our divisions on the matter of vaccines and travel.
We are all wondering when an app to confirm vaccination status will be standardized and available so Americans will be able to cross borders into waiting arms. (There are some apps out there, but they need to be coordinated.)
President Biden has said he has no plans for a federal vaccination verification app, but there nonetheless has been strong political kickback on the concept of a “vaccination passport,” with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., calling the concept “Biden’s mark of the beast,” and she and others in her political corner have compared vaccination verification with Nazi policies to identify Jews.
Florida’s governor is strongly opposed, but New York state has created a vaccine verification app, and New York City is likely to follow suit. But for now, it appears that, unlike the EU, we will not have access to a federal vaccination passport.
It would be easy to buy into our deep divisions, but I think we should stop. The fact is that no more than two-thirds of Americans have ever been on board about anything. Yes, we’re divided, but the fact is that we always have been.
John Adams once wrote that only about one-third of our country supported the American Revolution.
In September 1939, the Gallop organization polled Americans on the question should the United States declare war on Germany. Great Britain and France already had, but still, 48% of Americans said no on the question of whether the U.S. should declare war on Germany.
At least one-third of Americans were opposed to a Civil War that saw many more American soldiers killed in the battle of Antietam than in storming the beaches of Normandy during WWII.
Ours is a divided country, and those of us in the travel industry better get used to it. We will need Covid strategies in our agencies, on our ships, on our planes, and in our hotels. We will be living with this for some time. We will not achieve herd immunity.
Just how divided are our clients and potential clients? One in five Americans believes that the government is using the vaccine to “microchip” the population. In a recent YouGov poll, 66% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats from Southern states say they now support secession from the United States and the formation of their own country.
I wonder just how that will affect airline schedules.
A report from Travel Weekly USA by John Alwyn-Jones, Special Correspondent Travel and Tourism, Global Travel Media.
