Wishing you peace, health and travel in 2022

Each January a lot of us sit down to set our New Year’s resolutions. Things are going to change this year, we tell ourselves. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes we do hold ourselves to our promises and take that next step. That works on a large scale as well as a personal one. Each time we think we’ve made progress in the fight against COVID-19, we seem to take a step back. Right now, it’s the highly contagious omicron variant that’s wreaking havoc.

It might be hard to see through another wave, more cancellations. And you might not want to hear it when you’re scrambling to find another flight after yours got canceled, or when the CDC is advising against cruising regardless of vaccination status. But things really are getting better, and they’ll continue to. A year ago, less than 1% of Americans had gotten the opportunity to receive a COVID vaccine. Today, the vast majority of us age 5 and older are eligible for vaccines, and many of us have even had a booster shot. Almost half the people in the world are fully vaccinated, and the G20 has set a goal of 70% by the middle of this year.

When 2021 arrived, only a handful of countries were welcoming visitors from the U.S. While omicron has brought a few more restrictions, dozens of countries have opened up in the past year, and more have plans to reopen this year. More at-home tests are coming to make meeting travel protocols easier. Antiviral pill treatments will save lives and keep many people out of the hospital.

The world is still out there. It’s even more beautiful and amazing than it has been in your dreams. It’s ready to welcome you into a brighter future, to shed the worries of these last two years. Big events are coming back, drawing people from the world over to gather once more. And believe it or not, plenty of people are still booking for this year, so if you want to go play on the world stage in 2022, you’d better start planning.

We don’t always meet every resolution we set in January, but the exercise forces us to think about change and improvement, how far we’ve come and how much there is to go. Not everything is going to go according to plan in 2022, but if the last two years have taught us anything, it’s to not take the good things in life for granted. When you need help with travel, at least, you know you can turn to us and we’ll do our utmost. Whatever turns life takes in 2022, we wish you peace, health and travel in the new year.