It is always nice when you have a place to yourself as a traveler, but sometimes that does make you wonder whether you should be there in the first place 🙂 I think we’ll be asking ourselves these questions for quite some time as different parts of the world open up after they have been vaccinated to a certain percent and rates of new cases begin to go down.

Your response gets to the heart of the question here regarding taking responsibility for other people’s health and well-being, as well as your own, when making the decision whether to travel. More of the world is getting vaccinated now, but there are still great inequalities as to where those vaccines are going and it will take potentially years for the world to be vaccinated. These questions around ethics and travel and responsibility have always been there, but they will continue to rise up more and more with this and other pandemics.

Annemarie, well put. Here’s to travel in a different, more meaningful way, than what was the norm prior to the pandemic. I do think that as travel emerges again travelers will seek more natural settings, smaller towns and local businesses so that they have a different experience.

Stephanie, it’s definitely a complex issue to think and write about, especially when you also begin looking into the layer of privilege on top of all this. Travel is definitely a privilege that most of the world still does not have access to due to socio-economic, political or many other reasons. So, understanding and acknowledging the privilege to do have to make decisions about travel goes hand in hand with taking responsibility for our actions.

Madi, you ask some good questions regarding whether travel now would be as enjoyable to you and also beneficial to the local community. Even as vaccinations begin to roll out around the world, it will still take a lot of time for local populations in many countries to be vaccinated so that travel is again safe for everyone.

Thank you, Lynn, for your thoughtful comment. As you said, even pre-pandemic many of these same issues of negative impacts existed, but we were perhaps not as aware of them. We do hope that an outcome of the pandemic is that people are more aware of the potential impact of their travel decisions and support the places and people they visit.

We should be more aware of our actions and its effects now than ever and use travel as a means to support communities and the environment.
Love your philosophic approach to it! 🙂