5 Tips for Safe Holiday Travel Amid COVID-19
From staycations to home rentals and flights, here are some easy ways to ensure your holiday travels are safe and enjoyable.
If you’re planning on staying where you are, staycations are a great way to reconnect with your city and take exciting day trips.
Home rentals have been shown to be safer than hotels, so an Airbnb might be your best bet for a safe getaway.
AAA offers several tools to help people who decide to drive to their destination.
If you plan on flying, make sure to be diligent about wearing your mask and disinfecting any surfaces you plan on touching.
Experts recommend getting tested before and after you arrive at your destination, ideally with a 5-8 day window between possible exposure and test.
It’s officially the start of the holiday season. With all that’s happened this past year, some good old fashioned holiday joy is exactly what the proverbial doctor ordered. However, like with so much else this year, this holiday season is likely to look much different than holidays in years past. The CDC continues to advise against all holiday travel this year, and health experts warn that big Thanksgiving dinners will lead to small Christmas funerals. Despite these concerns, AAA forecasts that about 50 million Americans will travel this Thanksgiving — down 10% from last year — with about 95% of travelers driving to their destinations. But with nearly 200,000 new COVID cases and over 1,500 deaths per day, this decrease in travel may not be enough.
However, many people haven’t seen their family members since early this year due to the pandemic, so many have weighed the risks and are choosing to see family as safely as possible this holiday season. For those planning to see their family, we’ve compiled a list of five tips to make sure you can be as safe as possible this holiday season.
5. Get tested before you leave
Staying safe while traveling is one thing, but before leaving it’s important to make sure you’re not a risk for anyone at your destination. Experts advise that you get a PCR test, isolate for 5-7 days, and then get a second test. The incubation period for COVID-19 is about 3-4 days, and the test is most accurate around 5-8 days after infection. Get tested too early, and you might end up getting a false negative. It’s also important to note that the faster the results, the less accurate the test, so it’s unpleasant but the nose swab test is the best way to see if you have COVID-19 or not. To be extra careful, you should also isolate for about a week after you reach your destination and then get tested one more time.
4. Flying home
If you’ve decided to fly home for the holidays, remember to be prepared. While planes have been shown to have excellent air ventilation and filtration (particles are cycled away about every 6 min) so much of air travel safety relies on your fellow travelers keeping their masks on while in-flight. Because so much is out of your control, it’s best to be extra careful when flying.
Be diligent about wearing your mask, and if you can, try to get a hold of an N95 mask for the trip. If not, try to wear multiple layers of masks to ensure as much protection as possible. While it may look silly, wearing a face shield along with your mask can offer further protection for the parts of your face that aren’t shielded by a mask. Lastly, be like Naomi Campbell (pre-pandemic) and disinfectant and use it handily on all surfaces that you plan to be touching, and overuse your hand sanitizer after you’ve touched any foreign surface.
3. Making the drive
You live in California, your folks live in Oregon, and in lieu of a flight, you’ve decided to make the drive to see them for the holidays. Road trips have become increasingly popular during the pandemic at least partially because they’re seen as much safer than flights. Deloitte Digital found in a study of 16,000 Americans that “road trips and short-haul regional travel were preferred by 65 percent of respondents, a number it expects may increase during the holidays.” So if you’re planning on making the drive as COVID safe as possible, AAA offers two tools built specifically for road trip safety.
Triptik is a road trip planner that helps you plan your trek with a map of gas stations, places to stay, and more. AAA also has an ever-evolving map with updated COVID travel restrictions for the U.S. and Canada. This map also includes the number of confirmed cases so you know which areas to avoid, land closures, travel checkpoints, and border crossing closures.
2. Rent a place
Maybe you’ve decided to spend the holidays with your social pod this year rather than with your folks. No matter the reason, you can still get away this holiday season. Airbnbs have become more popular during the pandemic as shown by the research arm of Edison Software — Edison Trends. Since the week of May 18, Airbnb booking rates have surpassed 2019 levels. Additionally, research is showing that renting a home is safer than staying at a hotel, so if you’re trying to get away while staying COVID safe, booking an Airbnb might be your best option. Alternatively, if you’d rather spend your time closer to the outdoors, Hipcamp is a booking site similar to Airbnb but with a focus on camping, RV parks, cabins, treehouses, and glamping.
1. Staycation
Maybe you’ve punched in the numbers, done the math, and realized that this holiday season it’ll be best if you stay where you are. Luckily, when done right, a staycation can be a great way to spend the holidays. It’s likely that your home has doubled as an office, and perhaps even tripled as an online school. Often just being around your work setup, even though you’re not working, can keep you from fully relaxing. So first thing’s first, you should do your best to clear away all work related items. Cover your monitor, pack up your laptop, whatever you need to do so you’re not staring directly at your work while you unwind.
If you’re in a warmer climate and the winters aren’t too rough, you could spend a night or two camping in your backyard. Alternatively if the weather is too cold where you are, relive your childhood memories and pitch a fort in your living room for a night of classic fun. Staycations are also a great time to play tourist in your own city. Maybe it’s finally time you checked out that trendy restaurant your friends keep telling you about or visit the sites tourists are always raving about. Regardless of what you do, staying at home is a wonderful way to reconnect with the place you live.
Lastly, you can plan a series of day trips for yourself. Hop in your car (or train) to check out some neighboring towns you’ve been meaning to see.
Regardless of how you decide to spend Thanksgiving Day and this holiday season overall, it’s important to stay as safe as you can. Check out our previous travel blog to see how Edison Mail can help you out this holiday travel season. Follow the CDC’s guidelines for traveling during COVID-19, and make sure to get tested and stay socially distanced when you can. With rising rates, the virus is now in more places than before, and more easily spread. Hopefully by this time next year, these precautions will be a memory, and families will be able to gather without fear infection.
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