Starting to travel again

[Exterous]

Hopped on a plan for the first time in well over a year recently to go to a tiny ceremony for a family member who got tired of waiting for COVID to end before getting hitched. It was interesting to see how much I missed it - even all the annoying parts. Of course I got randomly selected in the pre-check line to have my laptop swabbed. The parking, the waiting, the clueless other travelers. By the time the plane took off I was leaning against the window and smiling - enjoying it all and reveling in the familiarity.

As an added benefit with less business travelers there are a few extra perks. I had the airport lounge entirely to myself so I could sit back and enjoy a coffee in quiet maskless comfort. The SW infinite legroom seat was available for me despite being at the end of the A boarding group! And the two hotels I stayed at went out of their way to upgrade my room. We'll see if that continues in July as I join what is sure to be a teeming mass of humanity trying to escape the boredom of being homebound for the last 16 months

 

[SKORPI0]

Good for you. I've been looking to travel too Chicago Midway -> Oakland, CA--> Chicago Midway and fares has been low < $79 each way which I've never seen before.
Did your airfare go low too?

 

[Exterous]

Yeah it was $50 each way and a lot of other routes seem cheap too

 

[sdifox]

too soon

 

[BoomerD]

I haven't been on a plane since...December 2007...and in no hurry to do it again.

 

[brianmanahan]

i got a wedding upcoming, but luckily everyone lives local so no need to fly. plus its outdoor which is a plus.

don't really see myself flying again for a few years. i can't wait until it's safe though, i really want to visit france and germany.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I've got a cousin that flew in back in October. He said, he's been flying less....but still flying a few times a month. After getting vaccinated, I really would think flying shouldn't be a big deal. I would still wear a mask, wash hands....distance as much as possible....try to keep moving and not linger anywhere.

I've said it before and saying it again...I can't wait for my kids to get jabbed in the arm with the vaccine so we can take trips without worrying as much about them.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

My understanding as of right now is that everyone is on a huge travel binge - hotels are being filled up, planes are full, etc...

I'll pass until the binge demand dies down.

I would honestly rather AirBNB a lakehouse and drive 3-6 hours or something. Fuck overpriced traveling and I don't look forward to being near people again anytime soon. I've been enjoying that.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

I've been traveling for work during Covid, but only started flying two weeks ago. Nothing different, except less people.

 

[Wreckem]

I’ve been to Vegas four times, Orlando twice, and Hawaii once in the past 12 months.

It has gotten busy again. I much preferred deadness of pandemic traveling. Now everything is super busy. I have a cruise out of Nassau scheduled in July. 40-50% ships capacity is the max. Estimate is approx 1500 people vs 3000-3200 people. Probably the last area of travel that will have reduced occupancy for quite a while.

 

[Wreckem]

My understanding as of right now is that everyone is on a huge travel binge - hotels are being filled up, planes are full, etc...

I'll pass until the binge demand dies down.

I would honestly rather AirBNB a lakehouse and drive 3-6 hours or something. Fuck overpriced traveling and I don't look forward to being near people again anytime soon. I've been enjoying that.

Hotel bookings are still way down. Better than last year but way under pre-pandemic levels. To the point the hotel industry is about to do another round or layoffs.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Hotel bookings are still way down. Better than last year but way under pre-pandemic levels. To the point the hotel industry is about to do another round or layoffs.

I stayed at a simple hotel and did a 3 hour road trip to the city next-door to mine. It wasn't overfilled, but still had decent number of people. I think 1 of the 4 nights I was there it was full house.

I WANTED to stay at a resort hotel to hang out by the pools. Their pricing was a ABSOLUTELY NUTS. It was $250 - when previously I had it booked for ~$185. On TOP of that, previously they had the "oh so fun" type of "resort fee" where it was $30/night... they jacked it up to $55 or $65 or something per night. So ontop of the room rate being more than previously (which was only ~1 year ago), they jacked up the daily resort fee too lol.

I laughed my ass off and said, whelp, guess were doing something different this time.

They definitely aren't hurting....

 

[Wreckem]

I stayed at a simple hotel and did a 3 hour road trip to the city next-door to mine. It wasn't overfilled, but still had decent number of people. I think 1 of the 4 nights I was there it was full house.

I WANTED to stay at a resort hotel to hang out by the pools. Their pricing was a ABSOLUTELY NUTS. It was $250 - when previously I had it booked for ~$185. On TOP of that, previously they had the "oh so fun" type of "resort fee" where it was $30/night... they jacked it up to $55 or $65 or something per night. So ontop of the room rate being more than previously (which was only ~1 year ago), they jacked up the daily resort fee too lol.

I laughed my ass off and said, whelp, guess were doing something different this time.

They definitely aren't hurting....

anecdotal evidence is still just that. There are still a large number of hotels that are still shut down across the country. Their employment levels are about 20% lower than precovid. The hotel occupancy rate in the US is still about 25ish percent lower than preocovid. The hotel industry isn’t expected to make it to precovid levels of profit until 2025ish. The industry itself is still very much recovering from billions in losses.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I stayed at a simple hotel and did a 3 hour road trip to the city next-door to mine. It wasn't overfilled, but still had decent number of people. I think 1 of the 4 nights I was there it was full house.

I WANTED to stay at a resort hotel to hang out by the pools. Their pricing was a ABSOLUTELY NUTS. It was $250 - when previously I had it booked for ~$185. On TOP of that, previously they had the "oh so fun" type of "resort fee" where it was $30/night... they jacked it up to $55 or $65 or something per night. So ontop of the room rate being more than previously (which was only ~1 year ago), they jacked up the daily resort fee too lol.

I laughed my ass off and said, whelp, guess were doing something different this time.

They definitely aren't hurting....

I'm hopeful that state legislation will fix the way hotels are using fees. The past few years, this had gotten out of hand and I read that some states are cracking down because enough people were complaining that the fees weren't on par with the services received. Even worse is when you pay a $45 daily fee and then have to pay $40 valet because self parking isn't an option.

I understand that hotels are often privately owned franchises. I also understand the burden of staffing them and covering maintenance expenses and franchise-related expenses. (where they're forced to do things that don't readily generate any profit) Just saying, they should boost the room rate and stop playing games. When travelling, I'll sometimes just opt to stay 5-10 minutes out from where I want to be for the sake of avoiding the nonsense. I'm just afraid business travelers and wealthy leisure travelers will keep on putting up the dough.

 

[Shmee]

I am hoping to go to Quakecon this year if it happens.

 

[skyking]

My wife's doc says no to international travel for her for many "reasons". We will be camping and the like for 2021, in the PNW.
We plan on the UK next year.

 

[mooncancook]

Wasn't sure about any travel plan till we saw a deal to Maldives that's too good to pass. We are able to cover the over-water bungalow with our Mariatt points. It's going to be around Xmas, hopefully we won't have to cancel our travel plan this time.

 

[Jeeebus]

Wasn't sure about any travel plan till we saw a deal to Maldives that's too good to pass. We are able to cover the over-water bungalow with our Mariatt points. It's going to be around Xmas, hopefully we won't have to cancel our travel plan this time.

We'll be in Dubai/the Maldives early December. The Marriott looks like a great resort for points. We're staying elsewhere but that looked like a great option. There was some sort of glitch when we were looking and their gigantic room (something like 10,000 sq ft) was bookable on a ridiculously reasonable amount of points. I considered it for shits and giggles, but my wife was set on a different resort.

 

[K1052]

We're going somewhere domestic at least once a month thru the end of the year since we broke the seal with Maui in April. Most international is out but we are heading to PVR mid November.

 

[Scarpozzi]

We'll be in Dubai/the Maldives early December. The Marriott looks like a great resort for points. We're staying elsewhere but that looked like a great option. There was some sort of glitch when we were looking and their gigantic room (something like 10,000 sq ft) was bookable on a ridiculously reasonable amount of points. I considered it for shits and giggles, but my wife was set on a different resort.

I've seen a lot of travel deals for the Maldives targeting the US. I'm guessing they're really pushing to get people to show up because they've lost so many travelers from Europe. I'm guessing I've seen 4-5 targeted ads from hotels for the place and probably didn't ever see any prior to COVID.

 

[skyking]

I miss PVR. We went a couple of times in the 90's, then had a streak of Kona that broke the Mexico thing.

 

[NuclearNed]

We never stopped travelling, really. Last year the wife & I just did long driving trips - taken with a whole lot of precautions. This year, now that we're vaccinated, we've already flown a couple of times - once to Jackson, WY, and once to Las Vegas.

We've always been germophobic travelers - we learned many years ago that nothing sucks more than getting sick on vacation. Years of practice made us very ready for COVID when it hit.

 

[skyking]

My wife's work has been such a pressure cooker the last two years, it makes planning travel painful. The solution is to retire.

 

[pete6032]

I took three leisure flights in the past year, plus a couple road trips. The flights weren't bad. Didn't get COVID.

 

[mooncancook]

We'll be in Dubai/the Maldives early December. The Marriott looks like a great resort for points. We're staying elsewhere but that looked like a great option. There was some sort of glitch when we were looking and their gigantic room (something like 10,000 sq ft) was bookable on a ridiculously reasonable amount of points. I considered it for shits and giggles, but my wife was set on a different resort.

The one we booked was ridiculously cheap at just over 30k pts per night for over water porperty. We thought it was fake coz we didn't see any actual photos of the property in the link, and searching online yield no result of people sharing photos or videos of the resort. Found out that it's actually a brand new resort that will be opening in Aug. Last we checked the redeemable rooms are out and it cost over $2k per night now.