Travel Bits: February 2020

To travel or not to travel.......

At the time of writing this blog post, the travel industry is roiled by the ongoing coronavirus, COVID-19, outbreak. This has caused much upheavals in the travel world, including trips and flights cancellations.

The question I kept asking myself was, should I still travel at this time? As a matter of fact, the fatality rate of COVID-19, at about 2%, is much lower than the SARS outbreak of 17 years ago in 2003. In most cases, healthy adults who were unfortunate to be infected with COVID-19 typically displayed mild symptoms and recovered without much or any long term effects,. This is based on currently available data. Thus, as a healthy individual without any pre-existing medical conditions, I should be fairly safe even in the event that I caught the infection while traveling. That being said, I could also have easily caught the infection even if I am staying put in my home country. Unless, I barricade myself at home and cut off all contacts with everybody, there is always the small chance and risk of catching the infection. 

Medically, there is thus no reason why I should not travel. Still, I have not proceed to finalise my annual travel plans as I would normally do at this time of the year. Why is this so when the medical evidences clearly show that COVID-19 is not as deadly as what many painted it to be?

Potential travel chaos is the reason. Because of the many unsubstantiated news circulating on the internet and social media with regards to COVID-19, the herd mentality adopted by lots of people is one bordering on irrationality and hysteria. Recent reports of entire groups of people being quarantined in their hotel just because one person was suspected to be infected is disconcerting. Also, due to rapidly declining demands, airlines are constantly in the midst of assessing and re-assessing their flight schedules, with the result that many flights can be postponed or even canceled at the eleventh hour. Hotels are not helping themselves by insisting that almost all bookings are non-cancellable or non-modifiable. Yes, one can still make accommodation bookings which are cancellable or modifiable but these bookings are now being slapped with surcharges that can be double or even triple of their normal rates, thus making the bookings unjustifiable to the traveller.

Travel insurance is not helping much either. Most travel insurance policies are silent on whether they are still applicable if my travel is disrupted due to last minute flight cancellations or sudden outbreaks of COVID-19 at the intended travel locations which may prompt local Authorities to cancel travel visas etc. 

With so much potential disruptions beyond my control, I just can't find any reason to plan and finalise any trips. A wait-and-see approach thus becomes the new normal. It is looking like this year will be one of very little travelling for me. On a positive note, I will be saving a lot of money which I would otherwise have spent on my travels, considering that I do not exactly travel budget-style.

When travel is not available, reading becomes my window to the world. Reading materials at the Singapore Airlines' Business Class lounge, Terminal 2, Changi International Airport, Singapore (2017)