The Deal Not Taken

Travel isn’t just about frolicking witless on a beach — and even if it is, so what? It supports the cabdriver and his family, the cook and her family, the hotel staffer and their orbit. According to the World Travel Tourism Council, travel accounts for one in 10 jobs globally, and the current shutdown threatens the livelihoods of 50 million people.

Take cruises: According to the Cruise Lines International Association, nearly 1.2 million people are employed in the cruise industry, which many travelers are warned to avoid.

Cruising’s economic footprint spreads far and wide where ships dock. Derek Duncan, who I met on Tortola while researching a story on the British Virgin Islands in January, is a fireman who supports a family of five by using his four days off a week to drive cruise ship guests in open-sided trucks to sites around the island. The cruise season, he said, typically dies in summer, so he has to make his money in high season, which is right now. And right now, sailings are being canceled.

“We were worried about the hurricane season coming up, but already here comes coronavirus,” he told me over the phone.

As the daughter of parents in their 80s, I am not deaf to the argument that my travel could endanger them. But frankly, my trip to Costco could endanger them. My father and I are already practicing social distancing, which is heartbreaking. My mother is in memory care where no visitors are allowed. I wonder when I will see her again. When the virus subsides? When there is a vaccine in a year? Does she have a year?

I am a traveler by trade, as well as temperament. I’m known to give a beach palapa about an hour before I’m off and exploring what else there is to do — what markets, what trails, what street art. Hassles and delays aside, I enjoy airports for their energy and the intersection of humanity streaming through them (for best people-watching, see Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Doha’s Hamad International or Singapore Changi).

Instead of seeking out those crossroads of race, class, culture and nationality that make human civilization so infinitely fascinating, the world is a little smaller today as the virus travels and we stay put. For now.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/travel/budget-travel-coronavirus.html