With the year coming to a close and many people still grounded due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you might be asking what is international travel like in 2021? Unlike last year, I was able to travel overseas. So, this is already a good sign. At least, some countries have started to open up and allowed tourists to travel under certain conditions. Hopefully, things only get better from here. I can only hope more countries open up in 2022 and that conditions for travel become easier as more and more people become vaccinated. So, how different is travelling in the year 2021?

Check-in just takes so much longer, because every person needs to be verified individually. Having your documents ready is a way to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Social Distancing

One of the important ways for preventing the spread of COVID-19 has been keeping proper social distancing. At the beginning of the pandemic outbreak, it was normal to see all different kinds of interpretations of social distancing. Whether it be fewer tables in restaurants, removal of chairs from public areas, or a limit of people in elevators. I’ve written about my various experiences with ‘the new norm’ in a few posts here.

The problem is that social distancing is hard to monitor. In a city as dense as Turkey, there are so many people, it can often be impractical to control who stands where. Both locals coming out of isolation as well as tourists beginning to travel mean the streets of Istanbul are starting to fill up again. It is not uncommon now to see buses and trains full of people now, whereas a few months ago no one would’ve sat next to you. There is often no public reprimand for flouting social distancing rules here. So in general there has been a lax in public adherence to social distancing in multiple places.

Face Masks and Hand Sanitiser

I’ve mentioned previously that the pandemic has really made me reconsider my approach to face masks and hand sanitiser. Whether travelling or not, they’re quite useful in protecting against germs and bacteria. So regardless of how the laws change regarding these pieces of health safety, I might still carry some with me when I travel.

Face masks, maybe the most iconic visual representation of the COVID-19 pandemic, are also going the way of social distancing. It’s no longer mandatory to wear a mask in some countries. While other countries have come up with a halfway rule, where you must wear a mask inside (like in malls and public transport) but do not need one outside. Even here in Istanbul, it’s very common to see people wearing their masks with noses exposed.

If you don’t carry hand sanitiser around, you can still find public dispensers here in Turkey. When we travelled in Budapest, places like hotels and restaurants still had hand sanitisation stations as well. I would recommend still carrying some sanitiser around with you, as official bodies ease up on their rulings and less people refill their sanitising stations.

‘What is Your Purpose of Travel?’

Once we started travelling internationally, this was a question we started to run into frequently. Many countries this year were not accepting ‘tourism’ or ‘visit’ as an acceptable purpose for travel in their visa application forms. However, with the European summer of 2021 over and with the Christmas holidays coming up soon, I believe many countries are now treating ‘tourism’ as an acceptable reason to fly. Make sure to check this when planning your next trip.

Flying to Hungary from Turkey during 2021 was an interesting exception. Technically, the country was not allowing tourists from every country to enter. So before we left Istanbul airport, as well as when we arrived, we got the question; ‘What is your purpose of travel?’. Thankfully because our two countries had a vaccination agreement, a Turkish vaccination card was enough proof and gave us a valid reason to travel. If you are planning a trip soon, have a look at which countries are forming travel bubbles with each other. If you would like more helpful travel planning tips, check out my post here.

Check In Online and Get There Early

Depending on when and where you’re travelling, you might get different results with your online check-ins. Earlier in 2021 we would never get our boarding passes after checking in online. There has been an issue processing your ticket, the notification would read. Or something to that effect. We would then learn that we couldn’t collect our online boarding passes because the airline wanted to check all our mandatory travel documents on the day of flight itself.

Later in the year this technicality would become a little less stringent. We would be given our boarding passes but still had to present our vaccinations or PCR-tests at the counter before being allowed on the plane.

My recommendation would be, get there early and be prepared. Preparation as well as a flexibility and readiness to change when things don’t go your way are excellent mindsets to have as an international traveller. For more helpful travel mindset, follow through to my article here.

Make sure you have print-outs, electronic documents, or both. Check-in just takes so much longer, because every person needs to be verified individually. Having your documents ready is a way to make sure everything goes smoothly. But it’s also important to prepare for the unexpected. Even though I had pre-uploaded all my documents on the airline’s online website and they had given me a digital stamp stating I didn’t need to be checked again, guess what happened? I was checked again. The person at the counter glazed over my green tick that said ‘travel ready’ and asked for our vaccination proof. Good thing we brought extras!

All in all, the travel situation is getting better worldwide. I wouldn’t say things are getting easier, there’s a lot more for travellers to consider. But since more and more locations are opening up, I would hope and say that things are looking better for holiday makers in the future!