BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's been almost a year since the pandemic forced many people to cancel their travel plans, and if you and your family are planning a post-vaccination vacation, you're not alone.
AAA says the numbers for people booking trips out of Western New York are on the rise, but they're still way down compared to last year.
Elizabeth Carey, the agency's director of public relations for Western and Central New York, says there is a pent up demand for travel to safe destinations; more people are starting to book for this spring, summer and later in 2021.
The top ten destinations booked for March are:
- Orlando
- Tampa
- Cancun
- Fort Lauderdale
- Punta Cana (Dominican Republic)
- Aruba
- Las Vegas
- Montego Bay (Jamaica)
- Miami
- Hawaii
The top ten destinations booked for Easter (April 2nd-11th) are:
- Orlando
- Fort Lauderdale
- Punta Cana (Dominican Republic)
- Montego Bay (Jamaica)
- Nashville
- Miami
- Virginia
- Cancun
- Turks & Caicos
- Tampa/Las Vegas/Hawaii/Bahamas
Carey says road trips to in-state and domestic locations, including the National Parks, are also still popular.
"It's easy to get to get to places within the United States, the Caribbean, and Mexico," she told 2 On Your Side. "There's some guidelines you have to follow, but those are places you know you can get to and get home from fairly safely, making sure you can of course wear your mask, social distance, wash your hands, and all of that. But, places that are a little harder to get to would be, of course we can't even cross the border to Canada, but international destinations that were extremely popular before the pandemic."
Carey says another new trend is people booking those big "bucket list" trips to places including Italy and other European destinations for 2022 and 2023.
"European river cruises, anywhere over in Europe, places that were on their bucket list that they learned from this pandemic, life is short and we should take advantage of the opportunity, so we're really seeing a lot of people moving forward and placing those bookings, and of course making sure they have a flexible cancellation policy."
For more tips for traveling during the pandemic from AAA, click here.
