Despite being one of the most unsafe countries in the world to travel to in 2020, thanks to COVID-19, the United States is seeing travel and tourism skyrocket during the summer of 2021. With warm weather flowing across the country and travel restrictions disappearing, Americans are eager to get out of their homes and travel around the country.
This is great news for the struggling travel industry. Everyone from luxury travel agents to small bed and breakfasts is seeing a surge in demand for their services, sending shockwaves around the industry. In many cases, hotels are not able to fill all of their rooms because they don’t have enough staff to look after all the rooms.
While this is undoubtedly good news for the American economy as a whole, the spikes in demand are causing a tremendous increase in prices for travel across the country. Everything from flights to hotel rooms to rental cars is tens of percent more expensive than they were in pre-COVID-19 times.
For some Americans, they are unable to afford travel this summer. And while this harsh reality isn’t normally a big deal, in the context of COVID-19, it’s extra taxing on a person’s mental health. In addition, it is not financially responsible for some Americans to overpay for a holiday, making the price gouging seem almost predatory.
After what is sure to be a summer full of travel and celebrations for overcoming the pandemic, Americans need to be on guard that the new variants of COVID don’t reinfect the population and send the country back into a health crisis. As it stands, many states in the US have low vaccination rates despite the over-abundance of vaccines.
To say that America is in a unique position over the next few months would be an understatement. One thing is for sure, COVID is not over yet and we need to be careful when traveling.