Experts give their opinions on when people can go on holiday again after the global coronavirus case numbers started to decrease since hitting an all-time high in January 2021. Vaccination programs are already underway all over the world, but engaging in leisure and other recreational activities may still be difficult. Although travel experts are confident that things will start to open up again this year, how swiftly that happens will depend on the location, the destination, and whether the virus and its mutated strains can be kept under control. With so much turmoil, staying healthy and staying at home is still the safest course of action in most parts of the world. According to the experts, the future, on the other hand, poses no danger.

“There are some destinations that travelers can still book a long-haul flight right now if they wanted to,” declares Bryce Conway, travel rewards expert and founder of 10xTravel. He said that there were flights open to US passengers to destinations like Albania and many parts of the Caribbean. But he did not expect the volume of long-haul routes to increase to pre-Covid-19 levels until 2022. Meanwhile, Alexis Barnekow, founder and CEO of the booking app Chatflights, agrees but he said that there were exceptions. “New Zealand/Australia is more difficult to book because airlines such as Qantas have decreased their inventory to a large extent,” he states. Entry criteria differ from one destination to the next, as well as from one country to the next. For example, Dubai is one of the most open cities in the world, while New Zealand is one of the most closed.