DENVER (KDVR) — On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released highly anticipated travel guidelines, lifting certain requirements for fully vaccinated people.
Those guidelines say fully vaccinated people can now travel safely within the United States, eliminating some testing and quarantine requirements. Someone is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving their second dose of the vaccine.
“We did actually get some trip requests within an hour or two of that happening,” Shelby Dziwulski with Denver’s Authentico Travel said. “There’s a lot of demand.”
Dziwulski said people are opting for vacations where crowds are limited and social distancing is easy, and said they’ve received a number of calls from people hoping to visit Colorado.
“If you are trying to go to Yellowstone National Park, or the Grand Tetons, or a big park like that, and stay in a hotel in the park? Completely sold out. Every single night,” she said.
At Denver’s Michele Travels, Michele Friedman said now is a good time to book, while airlines still have flexible cancellation policies in place.
“As more people are getting the vaccine, and more people are feeling safer about travel, the demand is high,” she said. “I’d say lately Mexico and Hawaii have been big, and I think as more and more countries open up, with this CDC requirement, it’ll just continue to build.”
Friedman said different countries have different testing and quarantine requirements, so she recommended doing your research or checking with your travel agent before making international plans.
“I would say start the process now, things are getting booked up when you think of all the trips that had to be postponed last year, to this year,” said Friedman.
Both companies recommend purchasing travel insurance in case you need to cancel for COVID, or any other reason.
“If you want to travel with us you have to have insurance,” said Dziwulski. “If you don’t, you can’t travel with us.”
For the time being, the CDC is still discouraging non-essential travel, citing a nationwide increase in COVID cases and hospitalizations.
The CDC says fully vaccinated passengers still should wear masks, stay six feet away from others whenever possible, and wash hands frequently. Masks are still required on all planes traveling within the United States.
In 2020, 33.7 million passengers made their way through Denver International Airport, down from 69 million in 2019.