With COVID-19 being an everyday issue for people around the world since the beginning of the year, many businesses across the country are going bankrupt from the virus’ economic effects. But one of the biggest businesses that have taken a hit from the start of the pandemic is the travel industry. With the biggest months of traveling coming up due to the holidays, traveling will undoubtedly be less busy than in years past.
But traveling comes in many different ways, planes, boats, cars and buses. One of the main ways of transportation for long distance travel are planes. Plane travel has been greatly affected by the virus due to the amount of people not buying tickets. Since the beginning of April, over four million people have lost their jobs in the air travel industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council has determined that by the end of the year, the airline companies and airports across the world will lose $2.1 trillion dollars in revenue.
COVID-19 couldn’t have hit at a worse time. Spring and summer are the busiest times of the year for travel. It is also the peak time for these industries to make their revenue. In the United States many states that account for great amounts of revenue. Those states include Nevada, New York and Florida. Nevada’s tourism industry has seen an outrageous decline in revenue and touristic businesses have even gone bankrupt based on the lack of tourists in hotels and casinos.
With 2021 only two months away, it is not looking good for traveling around the upcoming holidays. Thanksgiving is the time families gather around the table and enjoy various amounts of food and stories. With over eight million cases of COVID-19 within an eight month period it is not looking good for families traveling for Thanksgiving.
The biggest travel holiday for the United States is Christmas. It is widely known for chaotic shopping, food and traveling. Shopping starts off on Black Friday, which is a country-wide sale that has very large discounts on items that families can get for themselves or as presents. With the amount of people that go out on this day and shop, it would cause a lot more cases to arise. This can come from people not staying six feet apart, the stores not wiping down mandatory things that customers touch all the time and people not wearing masks.
With tons of people traveling around Christmas, it is hard to find a plane ticket that is cheap and can get someone there the day they were planning for. But for the airline companies it is a great time to get tons of money back. Back in 2019, the airline companies said over 41 million people are going to travel around this time for the holidays. But is all this traveling really worth the risk of getting a deadly virus?
This virus has caused millions of people to be infected even though they are wearing masks and following safety precautions. With the six feet rule taking place across the world, this could not be implied throughout the next two holidays. With planes having seats on top of each other and in a confined space, one person can have COVID-19 and not have symptoms and spread it to all. This overall can affect the health of family members when traveling across the United States.
