Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Traveling internationally these days certainly involves jumping through significantly more hoops. Traveling to some countries in Asia right now might be the extreme example of this - they have some of the most stringent requirements, and each country’s rules may vastly differ from the others. Not only that, but everything even moderately related to your trip has to be printed ON REAL ACTUAL PAPER - your vaccination QR code, your hotel booking, your flight booking, your digital entry document, your booster shot, your exit flight, your COVID test(s) - everything that is even kind of related needs to be printed.

This email might come off a bit doom-and-gloom, but I just wanted to be honest about way travel feels right now, what we’re seeing, and how the progression of the tourism industry has felt to us in the past few months. Things are still improving, and rapidly, and we stand by the statement that right now is the best time ever to travel. There’s just some things that I want to share with all of you that you should know.

It’s all totally worth it, of course, but wow, is the work to go to a new country significant. Here’s a snapshot of what we need to do to go to Bali, for example - straight from their website

That’s just for pre-flight. There’s just as many steps for post-flight, including special quarantine hotels, another COVID test, a QR code that you have to provide to your hotel after you get those results, and another test later. 17 steps in total. The most challenging part is condensing all this information into their app and uploading it all for all groups in your party before you go anywhere - you can’t make a single mistake in ANY of it, or else you just literally won’t be let in.

At least it’s possible now. That’s the saving grace. I just can’t help but wonder how long these complex systems of validating travelers will last. It must be tremendously expensive to upkeep all of these databases, create all these apps, hire all the people to actually check them, go through every single hotel to see if their cleaning is up to par, and all the other steps that need to happen to make travel feel safe enough for the residents there.

This is an up to date map of everywhere you can go if you are from the USA and are vaccinated from American Airlines’ Sherpa site.

We’ve seen every day the results of these complicated rules on the travel industry, and it’s not good. Travel has not rebounded yet to levels even remotely close to pre-pandemic anywhere we’ve been, and that’s because most people just simply do not seem to want to go through 17 uncertain and time consuming steps to go on their vacation, with the looming risk of testing positive and having to throw away not only their whole vacation, but also the possibility of messing up a single digit on their e-HAC form and not being let in.

If you look up the definition of run on sentence in the encyclopedia, you’ll find that sentence above. Lol. Sorry about that.

As an example of the cost of this on the businesses in the tourism industry, look at this article from a year ago about how bad things have gotten for restaurants in Ubud, Bali.

And that’s a year ago - it’s been closed for most of the time since then, so it’s only gotten worse.

So tourists are not only facing difficulties with even considering going to a country, but once they get there, everything they loved about it will be closed.

Honestly, I don’t see any of this getting any better until these lengthy, complicated, super risky requirements are loosened. I don’t think we’ve fully felt the cost of this pandemic in all our economies yet, and it feels like that bill is coming due soon.

Most people will look at that, and just go “ehhh, I’m gonna head to Europe, where the rules are simpler”. Just show up, show my vaccination certificate, and I’m in. If I get sick, I’ll hang out in my hotel room until I feel better.

The real problem is that Asia needs the most help getting their tourism economy back up and running out of anywhere. And, it feels like these countries are doing just about everything they can to make sure that nobody will want to come and visit.

It’s a careful balance, and it’s not like we have the answers here at all - but I know what I’m seeing - empty beaches, empty hotels, empty restaurants (if they’re open in the first place), empty streets, empty airports. If they’re trying to send the message that Asia is open again for tourism, it’s not working, yet. And it won’t be until the travel restrictions are, well, less restrictive.

And it really, really needs to. I see businesses struggling to keep their doors open every day here. It breaks my heart.

So, I’m going to end this email in the same that I did last week, with the same message as before - it’s difficult, sometimes annoying, and sometimes risky - but outside of all of that, right now is the best time that has EVER been to travel to Asia.

What I’m trying to say, if I’m saying anything, is that if you’ve been waiting to book that trip, waiting to plan that vacation, waiting to fly somewhere - now is the time.

You don’t need my permission. Just look again at that map above, or go and fill it out with your relevant infomation, and

The flights and hotels are never going to be this cheap ever again.

The beaches are never going to be this empty again.

And, you get the opportunity to help tourism get back on it’s feet. That’s something that benefits everyone.

Videos This Week

Our thoughts on the great Sydney vs Melbourne debate

This one ends well, lol

So, that’s it for this week. More videos coming soon!

See you next Sunday…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

P.S. - We gave our website quite a facelift, and added some new, very interesting stuff. If you made it this far into the email, you’re the first to know about it :)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs last year, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles. It’s been really taking off lately, but we still have a few uses of this link left for those of you who want to see the class for free. It comes with a free month of Skillshare, which is more than enough to watch our class and any of the other great courses on there!

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/lisaandjosh02221

Unsubscribe