How to Think About Travel During the Coronavirus

As coronavirus spreads across the globe, now’s the time to show our compassion for one another by actually staying apart and not traveling.

Far & Wide was founded on one simple principle: to encourage the traveler in all of us. We love travel because it gives everyone a broader perspective of the world, offering insight into other cultures and connecting us in the process.

But as coronavirus spreads across the globe, now’s the time to show our compassion for one another by actually staying apart. That means we must break from business-as-usual and encourage readers to not only avoid traveling internationally, but also domestically and even locally.

In most cases, travel restrictions have already been put in place. Same for restrictions on going to restaurants, the movies and your local watering holes. We know that the travel and hospitality industries will suffer greatly from this, so we want to do the responsible thing in an effort to stop the spread of this disease across our communities.

In the meantime, we urge you to look at travel from a new angle. Continue to support these industries by buying gift cards that you can use at a later date or making travel plans well into the future when things (hopefully) start to settle.

But as we are living smaller, more local, we encourage everyone to dream at greater distances. Take a virtual tour of a museum, cook up an international dish or find new curiosities on a walk around your neighborhood. Turn to armchair travel and travel journalism to awaken the imagination and open awareness to a larger world from the comforts of your home.

The adventurer in all of us will still be dreaming about that next trip, so we’ll, of course, continue to publish articles that you can save for future travel plans or simply read to fulfill that wanderlust. And when we’re cleared to move again, travel will always be there ready to connect us on an even grander scale than before — both locally and globally.