Traveling During Covid Season? These Tips Will Make Life Easier

We have all heard the stories: you book a ticket to your dream destination (way in advance), but by the time of the flight, a new variant of Covid has struck and turned everything on its head. You’re then stuck with the decision of canceling your dream trip or potentially risking your vacation because of a positive test.

This is where we found ourselves in December 2021 – and if this is where you are today, these tips Covid travel tips are for you!

Back in March 2021, we had found affordable business class tickets from Paris to Buenos Aires for Christmas (a huge bucket list item for us!). But by the time of our long-awaited trip, the world looked very different than it had 9 months before, and cases everywhere were rising. 

This of course threw our anxiety levels through the roof, especially since we knew that one positive test could derail our entire plans. We were both vaccinated and even had our booster shot, but we still needed PCR tests to get anywhere. 

Long story short, we decided to go on our dream trip. But in our case, Cristina tested positive for Covid after 2 weeks in Argentina – thankfully with no symptoms. We are grateful it didn’t happen before our trip, but quarantining in Buenos Aires and delaying the rest of the itinerary was no cakewalk either. 

While some may choose not to travel in uncertain times, if you are thinking of going abroad while Covid is still in the picture, these tips are for you. They are all tried and tested and stem directly from the mistakes that cost us money, time, and peace of mind. 

We hope these help avoid similarly challenging situations for you and do comment below if you come across any other helpful Covid travel tips!

Read Cancellation Policies Carefully

We have to admit – prior to Covid, we lightly skimmed cancellation policies, especially when it came to hotels. Most of them did give you the chance to cancel at least a day or two in advance, and by that point, you were almost 100% sure that you’d be on that trip. 

But things are different now, especially when you have to get tested so close to your flight. As we write this (a couple of months after our trip), many countries are dropping the PCR or antigen requirement with vaccination but who knows, those requirements could reappear during the next wave. 

This means that you may not have that full 1 – 2 days to cancel accommodations and get a refund. We’ve run across Airbnbs and hotels that require a few days to cancel and many that are completely non-refundable. 

Rental properties are also no longer lenient. We remember the days when having a legitimate excuse could sway properties – but a lot of these places are in the red after Covid and maybe a bit desperate. At this point, not even proof of a positive Covid test is strong enough to give you your money back. 

This all to say, we highly recommend going with a fully refundable accommodation or at least one where you may only lose 1 night rather than the full stay. 

The same applies for flights – the good news is most airlines now offer you at least airline credit upon cancellation but double-check. We had to delay our flight from Paris to JFK because of the positive test, and the charge would have been $3,000 to change the flight to the next day!

Avoid Prepaying for the Rental Car

We had to delay the day we would pick up the car in JFK because our entire trip was delayed, but we still wanted to return it on the same day. All we were asking was for the company to hold the car for us for two days, but the best they could do was hold it for 24 hours max. Since we had prepaid with Booking, we had to cancel and rebook, which meant that we were no longer getting the good deal we had originally found.

Book Directly Through Provider

Services like Booking and Expedia have been particularly helpful travel tools, but we’ve found they make changes and cancellations more complicated than they need to be because you’re now dealing with two companies.

We’ve had good experiences with hotels.com canceling our hotel reservations and at least attempting to get a refund, but it’s been incredibly challenging when dealing with it for car rentals. Because you didn’t book it directly with National or Hertz, there is nothing these companies can do. Instead, you have to call the agency to deal with it.

Unfortunately, they often don’t have the power to do much, so you’re then stuck in the middle without clear options for cancellations or changes. Simply put, dealing with just one company is often a lot easier and less messy.

Organize your Travel Confirmations

This is no new travel hack, but having all your itineraries, confirmation numbers, and cancellation policies in one place will make life so much easier if something goes wrong. 

Our whole trip was long and had a lot of moving pieces, so we had to spend a lot of time searching through our inbox to figure out what needed to be canceled or changed and how. This just added to our frustrations as we tried to figure out the next steps in an already stressful situation.

Come Up with a Plan

Whether you’re traveling with your significant other or a friend, it’s best to come up with some sort of game plan in case you get Covid while abroad. Keep in mind, you might not get very much notice. In our case, Cristina was asymptomatic so we had no idea until the results came back.

There are lots of decisions that need to be made, like what if one person tests positive and not the other. Will you both stay and quarantine, or does the other person need to get back? This was a big question for us since only Cristina tested positive. Ultimately, we decided to both stay back, though it was a difficult conversation. 

Also, think about how and where you would rather quarantine. After the positive test, we moved out of our hotel into an Airbnb. That way we would have a kitchen and more space.

These might all seem like simple questions, but once you test positive abroad, everything becomes murkier. Emotions and fears will be high, while priorities will be consumed by uncertainty. For that reason, having the discussions in advance – even if the decisions change – will go a long way.  

Book Tickets Individually

When traveling together, we generally book our tickets together. That way it’s easier to keep track of things and we can make sure we get seated together. However, if you think you may need to change one reservation and not the other, make sure to book them separately.

We spent a lot of energy discussing whether or not Mike should leave Argentina since he was testing negative but only after a few hours of back and forth, did we realize it wasn’t even an option since it was all under the same reservation. 

Research Covid Testing in Advance

We would go from one place to the other, googling a couple of days ahead of our flight where to get tested. This was a terrible approach, as it caused a lot of anxiety and more money than we needed to spend. 

Every place is different and every country requires different entry guidelines. We had gotten used to the comforts of Serbia, where private labs are everywhere, and in 1 hour, you can get antigen results for $20, without an appointment. We quickly learned this wasn’t the case elsewhere.

In Argentina, hotels offer services where a nurse will come do the test, but they’re not fully reliable and are much more expensive. Since we got many there, we also learned the other way was to make an appointment and pay in advance through their local PayPal service. This meant you had to go make a deposit at a kiosk in order to confirm your reservation. 

In Paris, we chose to wait in an hour-long line at the airport for the test. And in the US, we ended up paying a lot of money since we didn’t make the reservation with enough time and had to rely on expensive/quick services. 

Having a plan of where and how testing works in each country will make an incredibly big difference. Ideally, even make the appointments in advance. And make sure you have enough funds set aside as they can cost over $100 each if they need to be rushed. 

Budget for Additional Costs

The unfortunate reality is that if you do test positive abroad, you will need to quarantine in that country. This means you’ll need to find somewhere to stay until you can travel again.

This can add up, as it likely includes costs for accommodation and food and potentially additional fees for flight or hotel changes. You’ll also need to get more than the initially programmed Covid tests, meaning even more costs. And this does not include potential medical fees that are hopefully not incurred. 

We agree with making the decision to travel – and in fact encourage people to do so safely. But just make sure you’re prepared financially in the event of unforeseen results.