Time to Roam

Travel is emerging, reshaped and reimagined, with a newfound focus around one idea: time. Today, travel is about taking time, with longer trips and fewer breakneck pit stops, lingering and exploring with greater leeway. Plenty may have vacationed in 2020 but often to easier, closer destinations: St. Barts, perhaps, or Mexico. The chance to explore again has inspired travelers to prioritize extra time they just never considered before. In 2019, 21 percent of trips booked by Asia specialist operator Remote Lands were longer than two weeks; now two-thirds are 15 days or more. Greaves Tours, which focuses on India, has seen the number of stops on itineraries halved, to just two or three compared with six or more two years ago; trips now lean longer, with far fewer one-week requests.

Travel allows time together. Families are reconnecting this way after separation, voluntarily or otherwise, during the pandemic. It’s not uncommon for groups to span three or four generations, 20 or more people exploring together where 8 might once have been the maximum. Adventurous, vaccinated eighty- and ninetysomethings whisk their grandchildren on safaris and to the Seychelles, each family grouping chartering a jet for their trip.