Covid Travel Planning – Helpful Sites
Covid travel planning has put my days of winging it and spontaneous travel on hold for a while. Covid has added layers of complications that demand both more planning and more flexibility. It’s kind of ironic that with the more detailed, in-depth research and planning comes not more certainty, but more ambiguity and unknown circumstances. But that’s also life!
As I prepare to travel later within the next few weeks (still an unknown), I am creating a flexible, possible itinerary, checking the covid requirements of each place, arriving to and leaving from different places, and verifying that I can comply with testing and filing requirements for each place.
To do this, I have checked many covid travel rules tools. Some are confusing to me, and some seem to be inaccurate, or not up to date.
European Travel
Since I am planning to travel to Europe, the best source that I found is https://reopen.europa.eu/en/from-to/OTC/ITA.
For Canadian travels, select your destination from the list at https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/ – though they all say avoid non-essential travel. For travellers from other countries, check the government website from your country, and also the government site of your destination country.
As a starting point, a good tool for anyone from anywhere is the Kayak tool because you can choose your country of origin and destination. It presents the information is in a way that is clear and easy to understand. And it’s also very handy for checking multiple countries at once. I can check travel from Canada to Italy, then Italy to Poland, then Poland to wherever I decide!
As I plan to both Italy and Spain, I check the Ministry of External Affairs for Italy. And for Spain, spth.gob.es or is a good tool with complete information.
For travel in Europe, a Passenger Locator Form must be completed for most countries. More documentation might also be needed, such as in Spain where they require a Traveller Health Form.
All of this can be checked on the Re-open EU site, which is an official site of the European Union.
Extra Measures
Extra measures that I will take before travelling now are to fill out the Registration of Canadians abroad form and to have the information on Canadian embassies-consulates for the countries that I visit.
By the way, I would not recommend the IATA and the United Airlines. I did not find them easy to use or accurate in some cases – or I thought they were inaccurate because they were confusing! But they are okay for a quick check or a visual of the colour-coded status of a particular country.
List of resources:
Re-open EU: https://reopen.europa.eu/en/
EU Digital Passenger Locator Form: https://app.euplf.eu/#/form
Spain for covid info and link to Health Form: https://www.spth.gob.es
Registration for Canadians Abroad: https://travel.gc.ca/travelling/registration
List of Canadian Embassies/Consulates: https://travel.gc.ca/assistance/embassies-consulates
