It’s been a long few years.
Mr. PiN and I love to travel. Even after discovering FIRE (or, at least, the concept of cutting costs and saving more, to be able to leave paid work early), we traveled.
However, our last trip abroad was in 2018. We were getting close to paying off the mortgage, and we agreed to cut back on travel for a year to finish the job. 2020 was to be the year that we started traveling again; we all know how that turned out.
We have recently returned from our first trip out of the country since the pandemic started, and I thought I would share a few reflections.
Travel is more expensive
There are ways to make travel less financially painful, but overall, I think our trip was more expensive than previous trips for a number of reasons:
I need more flexibility
Making flexible reservations has always been the more expensive option.
The difference is, now I really need the option to cancel at the last minute. COVID exposures, elderly parents, airline dysfunction: I just didn’t feel right buying non-refundable tickets. Unfortunately, all the sale prices you can find are for the most restrictive tickets. Picking a refundable ticket pretty much doubles the price.
Flexibility drove up our hotel prices too.
Refundable reservations were about $10 to $20 more per night, which does add up over a week.
Additionally, we didn’t finalize our itinerary until a week or so before the trip. Once we decided where we were staying, getting a hotel in that town just cost more.
Everything is more expensive
At least, with hotel prices. I understand why: growing energy costs, higher labor costs, increased-everything-else costs.
We spent the majority of our time at a lovely but older hotel which, before the pandemic, I would have pegged at $110 a night. Given that we were going to Portugal (supposedly cheaper), I suspect rooms at this hotel would have gone for as low as $95 a night in 2019. We paid about 50% more in 2022.
Priorities change
This might fall under “revenge travel.” It could also be attributed to “lifestyle inflation.”
In any case, we very much wanted to go somewhere new to us. And once we were there, we didn’t want to waste time.
Whereas previously, we might have walked long distances to save on money, or waited for the bus we had tickets for, this visit we paid to get places faster. Just missed the bus and don’t know when the next one will come? Hail a cab. The skies just opened up? Get out of the rain and into a taxi. Feeling tired and not up to climbing a couple hundred feet to your destination? Especially if you don’t believe the directions from Google maps? Pay for a tuk-tuk or–yes–a cab.
I don’t think we’ve ever paid so much for local transportation on a trip.
You can still save money when you travel
All those frequent flyer miles and rewards points you accumulated in the past few years can help defray the costs of travel.
This is a great time to use them: before the points get devalued and/or prices go up even more
I don’t have as many rewards points as I did in 2020, but I was able to put a number to good use. I was able to use my annual travel credit with the Chase Sapphire card ($300) towards this trip. I also used up nearly every single Cash Back reward I had with Discover to buy gift cards for Hotels.com; which I then turned around to book our hotels.
Overall, I saved nearly $1000 in out of pocket costs. And, I have a credit with Hotels.com for a hotel night to use in the future.
Technology is more pervasive
I am old enough to have gone abroad before the internet was really a thing. Back then, I pored over guide books for ages before leaving, and relied on them during the trip (plus Time Out, plus printed schedules one picked up at a train station or TI) for information.
One of my little pleasures in traveling out of the country has been turning off my phone (or setting it to airplane mode) for the whole trip–because, of course, it’s too expensive to pay for service overseas.
Given how much time I end up spending online at home (between work, and blogging, and social media), I thought it would be a relief to turn off the Internet for a week.
Instead, I found I had a huge problem.
Everything now assumes you have a working pocket computer. Reservations, tickets, schedules–all require an Internet connection.
I did, eventually, manage to enter airplane mode for 48 hours. I found my fingers twitching multiple times during those days, ready to check Apple News or Facebook for updates.
I can see that reducing screen time is something that I should probably practice now, even while at home.
COVID isn’t over
Obviously, having caught the virus (for the first time) while away, I now understand viscerally that COVID isn’t over with us, even if lots of people are ready to be over with it.
I knew that anyway, working in medicine, but it was different to experience it as I traveled in non-medical circles.
What does that mean going forward?
The next time I travel, I might pay more attention to COVID-related rules: whether or not the country still has rules about quarantine, masking, and testing. Keeping in mind that those rules might change between the time you make your reservation and the time you get there.
Travel is still a wonderful experience
For all that I spent more than previously on my trips, and found myself glued to my phone, and caught COVID…despite all that, I had a great time traveling somewhere new.
I didn’t worry about work at all for days, and when I did, it was mostly about having to get coverage if I was sick with COVID. It was a real relief to let my partners take over so that I could stop worrying about my patients for a week.
I learned a little about a different culture, enjoyed great food, sea air, and knocked myself out of my rut at home.
All in all, I am ready to plan another trip, keeping in mind the lessons I have learned from this more recent one.
Have you been out of the country since 2020? Did anything on my list surprise you? Do you have additional advice on travel?