Eliza Reid did not waste any time booking her first international holiday in years when the federal government announced its timeline for re-opening Australia's border.
The 30-year-old was optimistic, factoring visits to the UK, Morocco, France and Spain into her trip.
"We would have loved to travel earlier, but thought mid-2022 would be safest," Ms Reid said.
"We were quite confident that lockdown wouldn't happen again and that things were only getting better."
Ms Reid had to factor in a few extra pre-departure checks than she would have before the pandemic.
She used the federal government's Smart Traveller website to check the COVID-19 requirements of each of her destinations and carefully chose her flights, accommodation and travel insurance to ensure she would be covered if she contracted the virus on her trip.
Ms Reid's decision to book the trip herself seven months ahead of her departure date was common before the pandemic, but there are signs that COVID-19 has significantly altered the way most Australians travel.
Traveller hesitancy sees 'renaissance' for travel agents
Australian Federation of Travel Agents chief executive Dean Long said lingering concerns that COVID-19 restrictions could re-emerge were behind a major change to the way people plan their trips.
"The window that people used to book used to be about 120 days, up to 170 [days] for international travel by Australians," he said.
"That's now very rarely longer than 30 [days]."
Mr Long said travel agents had reported a strong recovery in business travel, with domestic bookings up 74 per cent on the lows of 2021.
However, international travel has seen the strongest return, with airfare sales up 404 per cent, and 16 per cent of all new enquiries to travel agents coming from people who had not used one in the two years before the pandemic.
Mr Long said travel hesitancy was steering many people into a travel agency because they were seeking help navigating the new travel world.
He said agents were seeing a "renaissance", with people anxious about meeting varying entry and exit requirements, including pre- and post-departure testing as well as minimum levels of insurance coverage for COVID-19 medical expenses.
"They're really keen to know first-hand experiences of what it's like on the ground at the moment," he said.
Research the key to travelling with confidence
The Insurance Council of Australia said that travel insurance policies would never include cover for government-enforced border closures nor travel bans because it would make coverage unaffordable.
It added that many policies would also not cover cruises, but that many cruise companies were offering free coverage as an incentive to get people back on the water.
However, industry specialists say there are other ways to regain the confidence to travel and ensure hard-earned holidays are not ruined by COVID-19.
In Ms Reid's case, she made plans that could be changed if the need arose.
"We made sure that all of our flights and accommodation bookings are refundable or flexible so that, if something happened, we could move things around," she said.
Her advice is backed up by CHOICE travel specialist Jodi Bird, who says research is the key to choosing accommodation and transport that people are confident will provide credit or a refund if travel is suddenly restricted.
"We know, for example, with the Australian domestic airlines, if you're booking domestically, they won't cover for domestic travel bans any more but, at the moment, they do still cover if there's an international travel ban," he said.
Mr Bird warned travellers using an agent should not automatically accept the insurance policy suggested to them.
"Before you go and actually take out a travel insurance policy, we recommend, maybe, just going home and doing a bit of research," he said.
"You might be able to get better, or cheaper, cover elsewhere."
He said there were a growing number of complaints about travel insurance claims.
"I think a lot of the travel insurers are still struggling with the higher quantity of claims and they are also trying to push back and enforce the loopholes in their cover, to make people really jump through those loopholes, so you — as a consumer — really need to understand what you are [being] covered for."
Long road to return to pre-pandemic travel levels
While traffic through travel agencies has been increasing each month, Mr Long said there was still a long journey ahead.
About a million Australians jetted off overseas each month before COVID-19, but the most-recent official data available for the industry showed there were only 375,000 departures in March 2022.
"What will be interesting will be how that starts to change towards the end of this year," Mr Long said.
"If we can get back to a booking window of more than 60 days and suppliers continue to have very good refund and cancellation policies because of COVID, that's going to be essential to growing back that consumer confidence."
For Ms Reid, who has begun her overseas trip, it was an incredible feeling to explore the world again.
"COVID cases are much lower in the countries that we are travelling to, compared to Australia, so that is comforting," she said.
"There are still restrictions in [some counties'] high-traffic areas — such as mask-wearing in airports and on flights — but once we are in the actual cities we are travelling to, you can just go about your day as you normally would.
"It is summer over here, and we are doing lots of walking, so we don't wear a mask when we are outside."
