Travelling in 2022?
According to a survey by The Expedia Group, 81% of people intend to go on holiday in the next 6 months – and 54% want to spend more than they did on their holidays pre-pandemic. Long haul, anyone?
It seems that in 2022, the travel industry will be able to start to regain some of the money lost throughout the pandemic, and people will be using their new found ‘freedom’ to travel & explore.
Additionally, 56% of those surveyed who often work remotely (like us VA’s) plan to take a combination business-leisure trip – which is also definitely on the cards for me this year!
Personally, we did manage to squeeze a holiday in October 2021, after a series of cancelled/postponed plans (including a special birthday trip to Venice). I tend to look after my entire family during the whole process of travelling (2 kids, my husband & my over 60’s parents included) and I have to say the whole process WAS a lot of extra work.
We escaped the pre-departure tests both in the UK and Spain, and just had to purchase day 2 tests for us all. But I think the thing that I found the most challenging was getting all the forms in order before you fly – and carrying what felt like a second suitcase full of documents around the airport – covid passes, boarding passes, passports, travel money, car hire voucher, villa info, passenger locator forms (which you can’t complete until the day before – leaving someone like me a nervous wreck!) and then having to sort out the UK locator form & day 2 test in order to come back!
I don’t know how anyone without tech skills, an iPhone/laptop etc would cope with it all if I’m honest? It must have put such a pressure on the airport staff. There was a particularly poignant moment flying home where the airport was so totally chaotic that people were missing their flights home due to horrendous queues and just utter bedlam in the airport. We were lucky and made our flight home (after I stopped to help a bereft guy at the airport gate who hadn’t booked his day 2 test so wasn’t allowed to board the plane until he had!)
In summary – travelling with your family when you are in charge is stressful! Just keeping the kids contained and making sure you don’t lose anything in the security scanners has my head in a spin. So for me – I really hope our next family trip in 2022 is a little less hassle. Having said that, the benefits of watching the kids splash around in the sun all week while sipping on a sangria? Worth every second of the extra pressure!
If travel planning has your head in a spin too – why don’t you outsource it to someone who keeps up to date with the latest guidance & knows exactly what you’ll need to do in order to get on a plane this year?
Rather than using a travel agent, it would be more cost effective to ask a VA with lots of travel experience to research all the options for you.
Book a call with me here or use the contact form here to find out more!
Happy holidays
