The world is getting close to one year of living in the 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic and how we each respond to the virus is, not surprisingly, very different. There are some people who are happy to travel internationally right now. Others are only comfortable traveling domestically, via road trips. And still others aren’t ready to venture out very far at all, for fear of getting sick.
Travel isn’t “one size fits all” and no one should be shamed for (or brag about) their personal decisions regarding travel in the age of COVID. However, I will say that when the pandemic is over, I suspect travel is going to skyrocket. Many more people will be ready to take all those 2020 vacations that were canceled or delayed. Not surprisingly, lots of would-be travelers have similar ideas of what those places are. You’ll probably want to avoid those places if you don’t want to deal with crowds.
An online visa application and assistance processing firm called Official-esta.com recently used the Google Keyword Planner tool to find the countries that people researched in August 2020 for future travel. They used search terms such as “Flights to Destination X” and “Holidays in Destination X” to analyze the top 200 or so countries and territories that people are interested in visiting in the future.
Here are the Top 20:
20. Germany
19. Barbados
18. Cyprus
17. Costa Rica
16. Malta
15. Philippines
14. Croatia
13. Iceland
12. New Zealand
11. China
10. Australia
9. Japan
8. Turkey
7. Greece
6. Canada
5. Spain
4. Thailand
3. Mexico
2. Maldives
1. Italy
It should be noted that although the list is for searches from around the world, it’s probably inadvertently biased against using U.S.-based searches, since we don’t use the term “holidays,” but “vacations.” If you only use the search term “Flights to Destinations X,” and not “Holidays in Destination X,” the Top 20 are then:
20. Philippines
19. Portugal
18. The Bahamas
17. Turkey
16. Maldives
15. Singapore
14. Ireland
13. Iceland
12. Costa Rica
11. Greece
10. China
9. Jamaica
8. Spain
7. Canada
6. Mexico
5. New Zealand
4. Thailand
3. Australia
2. Japan
1. Italy
Their data can be viewed here.
Of course, this data only looked at countries. There’s a lot of pent up longing for travel to historically popular domestic U.S. locations such as Hawaii, New York City, Las Vegas, Disneyland and Central Florida, which, I suspect, will eventually be teeming with tourism once the pandemic is over, as well.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
1 comment
As long I am flying in First Class and in staying in a 5* hotel suite, any of the places is OK with me! 🙂