The Future of Travel During COVID-19 According to Mike Glad
Mike Glad details what we can expect for the future of travel.
What will the future of travel look like? According to Mike Glad, it will never be the same. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 saw tourism come to a standstill. Many countries shut their borders, like Isreal, along with small island nations such as The Marshall Islands and Vanuatu. And it doesn’t look like they will reopen any time soon. To get into some countries as a tourist, according to Glad, you need a COVID-19 test. For other countries, like Mexico, tourists are screened for COVID-19 upon entry.
Countries dependent on tourism are hurting right now and want to reopen. At the same time, however, they don’t want an outbreak of COVID-19 to sweep across their nation. For this reason, many nations, including Seychelles, will only allow vaccinated tourists into their country. “We can now see where this is going,” says Mike Glad, who is an avid traveler and has been to some of the most remote corners of the world as a photographer of indigenous peoples, including Ethiopia, Yemen, Guatemala, and others.
What we can most likely expect is for vaccinations against COVID-19 to be mandatory for anyone to engage in international travel, according to Mike Glad. In fact, big tech is coming out with COVID-19 vaccination passports that will be your ticket to international travel once again. For those who don’t want to take the vaccine, they will have to settle for domestic travel within their own countries. However, the vaccination may be needed to even get on an airplane in the near future, says Mike Glad.
“Everything is changing so quickly,” says Mike Glad. “And that includes travel rules.” Before a person even thinks of visiting another country, they first have to check the coronavirus guidelines. In the future, according to Mike Glad, what we will probably see is one uniform set of requirements for entry into every country on the planet. Even with the vaccine, it is still very possible that social distancing and face masks will still be required. If so, this will make travel more cumbersome. Besides that, governments around the world have their own way of dealing with COVID-19 rule breakers so that presents problems within itself, says Mike Glad.