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    What Social Trends Told Us About the American Economy in 2021

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    If 2020 was the year that made Zoom a verb and imbued the phrase “online dating” with new meaning, 2021 was its annoying younger sibling. Things were not quite as novel and scary as the darkest early days of the pandemic and initial state and local lockdowns, but the year found new and creative ways to be bad.Shutdowns weren’t nearly as widespread, but continued waves of coronavirus infection caused factories to shutter and people to retrench from economic life. This was a year in which the Duke of Hastings replaced the Tiger King as a national obsession, vaccine cards became a passport to semi-normal life, and the internet lost its hive mind over America’s cream cheese shortage.Social trends like those can tell us a lot about the economy we’re living in. To wrap up 2021, we ran down what some of the big cultural moments and movements taught us about the labor market, economic growth and the outlook for 2022.The Everything ShortageSadly, it wasn’t just the schmear that ran out this year. Many, many things came up short in 2021. For a while, people tried to blame the fact that they couldn’t get hold of a couch or a used car on a ship stuck in the Suez Canal, but society eventually came around to the reality that we’ve all been buying so much stuff that we have collectively broken the supply chain.Government stimulus checks and savings amassed over long months at home have been fueling strong consumer spending, and the virus has shifted spending patterns away from services like restaurant meals and plane tickets and toward goods. Container ships, ports and factories couldn’t keep up with the unusual boom, especially as new virus waves spurred occasional shutdowns.Product shortages have raised prices, helping to push inflation up to the fastest pace in nearly 40 years. The big question is whether high inflation will continue in 2022. As the Omicron variant threatens to throw more kinks into global supply lines, economic policymakers worry that it will persist.An Anti-Work Era?About 1.5 million “idlers” and counting have joined a community on the site Reddit dedicated to “those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life.” If you were looking for a perfect expression of pandemic populist angst, that might be it: It’s replete with stories of bad bosses, workday abuses and both planned and spontaneous quits.Redditors weren’t alone in getting excited about leaving jobs this year. Americans quit their jobs at record rates, in what was labeled “The Great Resignation” or the “Big Quit.” Myriad essays and articles have tried to assess why people are throwing in the towel, but most agree that it has something to do with burnout after long months of exposure to public health risk or endless online hours during the pandemic.Some have suggested that a collective life-or-death experience has caused people to reassess their options, while others have suggested that the same government-padded savings that are allowing people to spend so much are giving them the wherewithal to be pickier about where they work and how much they are paid.Burned-Out BoomersThis may also have been the year that “OK, Boomer” ceded the floor to “You OK, Boomer?”A recent Federal Reserve survey of business contacts found that several “noted that baby boomers were leaving jobs and selling businesses to retire early — a trend that was due (1957 marked the peak year for births among baby boomers; those babies turn 65 next year) but has accelerated because of pandemic burnout.”That shows up in the data. People over the age of 45 have been slower to return to the job market since the start of the pandemic. That group includes members of Generation X, which ranges in age from 41 to 56, and baby boomers, who are roughly 57 to 75. It’s not clear if the apparent rush toward early retirement is going to stick: People may go back once the health scare of the pandemic is behind us, or if stocks return to less buoyant valuations, reducing the value of retirement portfolios.What happens next with the middle-age-and-up work force will be pivotal to the future of the labor market. If older workers stay out, America’s labor force participation rate — and the pool of workers available to employers — may remain depressed compared with levels that prevailed before the pandemic. That will be bad news for employers, who are increasingly desperate to hire.Generational Warfare, Skinny Jean EditionDon’t shed all of your tears for the baby boomers, because millennials also had a tough time in 2021. They divided the year between reminding the internet that they are graying, keeping Botox boutiques in business, and feeling aghast as Generation Z, their successors, accused them of being old. A generation that made the poorly informed decision to recycle the low-rise trend also had the gall to claim that side parts make people look aged and skinny jeans are out.Whether their elders are ready for it or not, the reality is that Gen Z, the group born from 1997 to 2012, began to enter adulthood and the labor market in full force during the pandemic. It is a comparatively small generation, but its members could shake things up. They are fully digital natives and have different attitudes toward, and expectations of, work life from those of their older counterparts.If office workers ever actually meet their new colleagues, things could get interesting.Everyone Hates ‘Hard Pants’Speaking of the office, this year put the initials “R.T.O.” firmly into the professional lexicon. Return-to-office planning was repeatedly upended by rolling waves of infection, but that didn’t stop cries of outrage. Many professionals began to question the utility of high heels and slacks — known derisively as “hard pants” — as opposed to their far more beloved and couch-friendly “soft pant” alternative.Whether the future of work-wear will involve more elastic waistbands remains an open question, but it is increasingly clear that America is unlikely to return to many of its old workday habits. Surveys of workers suggest that many did not miss the office, and employers are increasingly turning to hybrid work models and location flexibility, in part to avoid fueling further resignations.Travel Remained DepressedBorders closed, and opened, and closed again or included restrictions as waves of coronavirus tore across the world map this year. The same uncertainties facing national governments kept many travelers at or near home — international travel remains sharply depressed. Global tourism remained 76 percent below prepandemic levels through the third quarter, based on data from the World Tourism Organization.Aside from Emily, it seems that relatively few of us are making it to Paris these days. That’s bad news for travel-dependent industries, and one of the reasons that spending patterns are struggling to shift back toward services and away from furniture, exercise equipment and toys. That has kept inflation high across much of the world.Q.R. Codes Are on the MenuEven when we did shift our consumption dollars back to experiences, those were often much changed by the pandemic.A case in point: Many restaurants have moved to Q.R. codes instead of physical menus. Some of this is for sanitation, but companies are also turning to small doses of automation as a way to cut down on labor as employees are scarce. That has the potential to improve productivity. (The data so far on whether it’s working are mixed.) If companies do become more efficient, it could lay the groundwork for sustainably higher wages: The server who is now juggling twice as many tables as diners order from their phones can take home a fatter paycheck without chipping away at the restaurant’s profits.But it remains to be seen whether workers will win out as companies streamline their operations to meet the moment. So far, corporate profits have been soaring to record highs, but wage gains are not quite keeping up with inflation. Things are changing fast, so how that story develops will be a trend to watch in 2022. More

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    The World Economic Forum in Davos is still happening, for now.

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    The World Economic Forum is planning to go ahead with its annual meeting of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland, next month, even as coronavirus cases spike around the world.“We are hopeful that Delta will be on its way down by the time of our annual meeting, and we are hoping that the Omicron wave will not be as bad as some people think,” Peter Vanham, a spokesman for the organization, said on Thursday. “But everything depends on the pandemic.”Mr. Vanham said a final decision on whether to cancel the event — which drew roughly 3,000 people before the pandemic — will be made by Jan. 6, 10 days before it is scheduled to start.For more than 50 years, the World Economic Forum has brought together luminaries from the worlds of business, politics and nonprofit organizations to the Alps for a weeklong series of lectures, panel discussions and dinners. At the event, held in an upscale ski resort town, world leaders mingle with the chief executives from many of the world’s largest companies and the top bosses of Wall Street. Thousands more gather to attend unofficial conferences, dinners and parties on the sidelines of the main meeting.The last time people gathered in Davos was in January 2020, when many executives heard about Covid-19 for the first time. Much of the world shut down roughly two months later, and the 2021 gathering was canceled.But for the past several months, the World Economic Forum, which is based in Geneva, has been making plans to proceed with its annual meeting much as it had before the pandemic. The organizers have begun transforming Davos into labyrinth of high-security event spaces that includes a conference center, several hotels and a long stretch of the town’s main street.“We’re well into the phase where our sunk costs are being made,” Mr. Vanham said. “That’s a decision in itself — to prepare fully for next month, even if that means that in two or three weeks we might be confronted with a late cancellation because of Omicron. But we are definitely full steam ahead at this point.”The event’s organizers were emboldened by the fact that the Delta variant, which had sent average daily coronavirus cases in Switzerland to their highest level of the pandemic not long ago, had crested. Omicron, which Mr. Vanham called “the X factor,” has introduced uncertainly recently. “We will know just how bad that X factor is by the end of the year,” he said.Official attendance for the January event will be reduced by a fifth, Mr. Vanham said. He added that hotels in Davos were also expecting roughly 30 to 50 percent fewer attendees than in previous years.Still, thousands of attendees are planning to attend, including the chief executives of companies like Verizon, AstraZeneca and IBM. The leaders of at least three Wall Street banks, who often speak on the forum’s main stage, are still planning to attend for now, according to executives with knowledge of their banks’ plans.Bankers, who often use the forum to network with clients, are scheduling meetings for now and postponing the decision on whether to attend or cancel until closer to Jan. 16, when the event is slated to begin.Should the event go ahead, the organizers will install stringent measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. All those who attend the official meeting are required to be vaccinated and have a negative PCR test within 72 hours of flying to Switzerland. Once they land in the country, they have to take another test and will only receive their credentials if they test negative.And once the meeting begins, the organizers are planning to require attendees to take PCR tests every 24 or 48 hours at one of 14 on-site testing centers. More

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    How Omicron Could Knock Economic Recovery Off Track

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    The latest zigzag in the pandemic has already curtailed travel, but its broader impact on growth and inflation isn’t likely to be known for several weeks.LONDON — This week, Marisha Wallace finally had to admit that her planned five-day ski holiday in Switzerland in mid-December was not salvageable: The Swiss government’s sudden decision to impose a 10-day quarantine on some international travelers meant she wouldn’t be able to leave her hotel or return home to London on her scheduled flight.“It’s the way of the world right now,” said Ms. Wallace, an actress and a singer. “You can’t plan anymore.”That provisional state, amplified across the world, has left the still-fragile economy in a state of suspense as spiking coronavirus infections and the new variant Omicron have popped up around the globe.“There’s no way to know how bad it will get,” said Ángel Talavera, head of European economics at Oxford Economics.The forecasting firm has sketched out three scenarios, including one that predicts no discernible effect on economic growth and one severe enough to slash next year’s in half. It will take several weeks before there is more clarity, Oxford concluded.The current round of restrictions has already reduced travel and dampened consumer confidence. A virulent, vaccine-resistant strain could send the economy into a tailspin again, while a mild one could leave health care systems unburdened and allow the recovery to get back on track.As a report released Wednesday from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed, although growth has been uneven, the world economy this year bounced back more quickly and strongly than had been anticipated. The report, compiled largely before the latest coronavirus news, nevertheless warned that growth was projected to slow: in the eurozone, to 4.3 percent next year from 5.2 percent in 2021; and in the United States, to 3.7 percent in 2022 from 5.6 percent.The organization characterized its outlook as “cautiously optimistic.” But it reiterated how much economic fortunes are inextricably tied to the coronavirus: “The economic policy priority is to get people vaccinated,” the report concluded.Travelers from South Africa being tested at the Amsterdam airport on Tuesday.Remko De Waal/Anp/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIndeed, Omicron’s threat to the recovery is just the latest in a series of zigzags that the world economy has endured since the coronavirus began its march across continents last year. Hopes that an ebbing pandemic would permit daily life and commerce to return to normal have been repeatedly frustrated by the virus.Even before this latest variant was discovered, a fourth wave of infections transformed Europe into a Covid hot spot and prompted new restrictions like lockdowns in the Netherlands and Austria.During earlier outbreaks, trillions in government assistance helped quickly resuscitate the struggling U.S. and European economies. It also brought some unexpected side effects. Combined with pent-up demand, that support helped produce a shortage of labor and materials and rising inflation.Given how much debt was racked up in the past 18 months, such aid is unlikely to recur even with a sharp downturn — and neither are wholesale closures. Vaccines provide some protection, and many people say they are unwilling to go back into hibernation.People and business alike have shifted into a wait-and-see mode. “A lot of things do seem like they are on hold, like labor market or overall consumption decisions,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research for the job site Indeed.How that will affect unemployment levels and inflation rates is unclear. Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, indicated on Tuesday that concern about stubborn inflation was growing. The O.E.C.D. also warned that inflation could be higher and last longer than originally anticipated.Omicron’s appearance just adds to the uncertainty, Laurence Boone, the organization’s chief economist, said in an interview.The Nativity Hotel in Bethlehem. Israel on Sunday decided to close its borders to foreign tourists after the Omicron variant was detected.Hazem Bader/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“If it’s something we can cope with, like the virus we have so far, then it may prolong disruptions of the supply chain, and inflation could take longer to sort out,” she said. But if the new variant causes wider shutdowns and plunging confidence, she added, it could reduce the spending binge and dampen rising prices.In recent days, governments have reacted with a confusing hodgepodge of stern warnings, travel bans, mask mandates and testing rules that further cloud the economic outlook. That patchwork response combined with people’s varying tolerance for risk means that, at least in the short term, the virus’s latest swerves will have a vastly different effect depending on where you are and what you do.In France, Luna Park, an annual one-month amusement fair held in the southern city of Nice and slated to open this weekend, was called off after the government suddenly requisitioned the massive warehouse where roller coasters, shooting galleries and merry-go-rounds were being set up in order to convert the space to an emergency vaccination center.“Today I find myself trying to save my company, and I’m not sure that I can,” said Serge Paillon, park’s owner. He feared he would face huge losses, including 500,000 euros (about $566,000) he had already invested in the event, as well as refunds for tickets that had been on sale for several monthsMr. Paillon furloughed 20 employees. Another 200 festival workers who were coming from around the country to manage the 60 games and rides were told to stay home.“For a year and a half, it was already a disaster,” Mr. Paillon said. “And now it’s starting again.”Israel’s decision on Saturday to shut its borders to all foreign tourists for two weeks is likely to reduce the number of tourists in Israel and the occupied territories this December by up to 40,000, or nearly 60 percent of what was expected, according to a government estimate.Wiatt F. Bowers had to cancel his trip to Tel Aviv, the fifth time in 18 months he has had to scrap a planned trip to Israel.Agnes Lopez for The New York TimesWiatt F. Bowers, an urban planner, had planned to leave Jacksonville, Fla., for Tel Aviv on Wednesday but had to cancel — the fifth time in 18 months that he had to scrap a planned trip to Israel. He will rebook, but doesn’t know when.Foreign tourism, which brought a record 4.55 million tourists to Israel in 2019, had already nearly vanished. Between March 2020 and September 2021, nonresident foreigners were barred from entering Israel — and, by extension, the occupied territories, where entry and exit are controlled by Israel.In Bethlehem, where tourism is the main industry, income consequently fell more than 50 percent, said the mayor, Anton Salman, in a phone interview.Elias al-Arja, the chief of the Arab Hotel Association, which represents about 100 Palestinian hotels in the occupied territories, said he was concerned less about the short-term effect of the sudden travel ban than about the long-term message of unpredictability it sent to potential visitors.“The disaster isn’t the groups who canceled over the next two weeks,” Mr. al-Arja said. “How can I convince people to come to the Holy Land after we promised them that you can come, but then the government closes the border?”Reluctance to travel, though, could mean an upswing in other sectors if the new variant is not as harmful as people fear. Jessica Moulton, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company in London, said previous spending patterns during the pandemic showed that some money people would otherwise use for travel would instead be spent on dining.She estimated that the roughly $40 billion that British consumers saved on travel last summer was used for shopping and eating out.At the moment, Ms. Moulton said, “to the extent that Omicron decreases travel, which will happen as we head into Christmas, that will benefit restaurants.”Even before the latest variant was discovered, a fourth wave of infections transformed Europe into a Covid hot spot and prompted new restrictions like lockdowns in Amsterdam.Peter Dejong/Associated PressIn Switzerland, where travelers from Britain and 22 other countries must now quarantine, the effect of the policy change on hotels was immediate.“The majority of travelers from England — between 80 to 90 percent — have already canceled,” said Andreas Züllig, head of HotellerieSuisse, the Swiss hotel association.Ms. Wallace, who canceled her trip to the Cambrian Hotel in Adelboden, was one of several people who changed their reservations at the hotel after the Swiss government made its announcement on Friday, just one week before the slopes open.“This obviously has an impact on our very important winter and Christmas business,” said Anke Lock, the Cambrian’s manager, who estimated that 20 percent of the hotel’s December bookings were at risk.For now, though, most guests are watching and waiting, Ms. Lock said: “We’ve changed the bookings from guaranteed to tentative.”Extreme uncertainty about the economy may turn out to be the only certainty.Patrick Kingsley More

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    As Virus Cases Rise in Europe, an Economic Toll Returns

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    A series of restrictions, including a lockdown in Austria, is expected to put a brake on economic growth.Europe’s already fragile economic recovery is at risk of being undermined by a fourth wave of coronavirus infections now dousing the continent, as governments impose increasingly stringent health restrictions that could reduce foot traffic in shopping centers, discourage travel and thin crowds in restaurants, bars and ski resorts.Austria has imposed the strictest measures, mandating vaccinations and imposing a nationwide lockdown that began on Monday. But economic activity will also be dampened by other safety measures — from vaccine passports in France and Switzerland to a requirement to work from home four days a week in Belgium.“We are expecting a bumpy winter season,” said Stefan Kooths, a research director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany. “The pandemic now seems to be affecting the economy more negatively than we originally thought.”The Christmas market in Frankfurt, Germany on Monday. Some German states have imposed partial lockdowns.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersThe tough lockdowns that swept Europe during the early months of the pandemic last year ended up shrinking economic output by nearly 15 percent. Buoyed by a raft of government support to businesses and the unemployed, most of those countries managed to scramble back and recoup their losses after vaccines were introduced, infection rates tumbled and restrictions eased.In September, economists optimistically declared that Europe had reached a turning point. In recent weeks, the main threats to the economy seemed to stem from a post-lockdown exuberance that was causing supply-chain bottlenecks, energy-price increases and inflation worries. And widespread vaccinations were expected to defang the pandemic’s bite so that people could continue to freely gather to shop, dine out and travel.What was not expected was a series of tough government restrictions. A highly contagious strain — aided by some resistance to vaccines and flagging support for other anti-infection measures like masks — has enabled the coronavirus to make a comeback in some regions.“The lower vaccination rates are, the gloomier the economic outlook is for this winter term,” Mr. Kooths said.Roughly two-thirds of Europe’s population has been vaccinated, but rates vary widely from country to country. Only a quarter of the population in Bulgaria has received a shot, for example, compared with 81 percent in Portugal, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.A vaccination line in Lisbon. Covid-19 inoculation rates vary widely among European Union countries; Portugal is among the leaders.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore they were ordered shut, stores in Austria were already suffering a 25 percent loss in revenue for November compared with the same period in 2019, the country’s retail trade association said on Monday. Although the last shopping Saturday before the lockdown — stores in Austria are closed on Sunday — was stronger than that day two years ago, the group said, it would not be enough to make up for the losses expected in the coming weeks.Hotels were not faring much better in the week before the start of the lockdown, with one of every two bookings canceled, Austria’s hotel association, Ö.H.V., said.Still, the overall outlook is not nearly as dire as it was last year. Although several analysts have shaved their forecasts for October, November and December, growth is still expected to be positive, with the yearly increase hovering around the 5 percent mark. Jobless rates have dropped and, in some areas, businesses are complaining of labor shortages.Austria’s response, to impose a three-week lockdown — which shuts all stores except those providing basic necessities, allows restaurants to serve only carryout and requires people to stay home except for essential activities — is not necessarily a bellwether of what other governments across Europe will do. Leaders in France and Britain signaled last week that they were not planning new shutdowns.“We’re not at that point,” Sajid Javid, the British health secretary, said on Sunday. While there can’t be complacency, he added that he hoped people could “look forward to Christmas together.”Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Economics, said that while it was clear that restrictions and lockdowns had a significant and immediate impact on the economy, limited and intermittent closings — like those that already exist in some countries — were less likely to put a huge dent in overall growth.Rising infection rates will also push concerns over inflation — at least in the near future — “a little bit into the background,” he said.Much more difficult to assess, though, are the consequences of widespread restrictions on the unvaccinated or vaccine mandates.For individual businesses and regions, however, even the current limits could prove devastating.Restaurants in Austria will allow only carryout service.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe weeks leading up to Christmas Day are among the most important shopping days in Austria and Germany, where people gather at outdoor markets to eat, drink and buy gifts. The region’s traditional holiday markets, which normally open from late November until Dec. 24, are also an important tourist draw, and generate wider revenue through hotel bookings and other cultural events.Last year, many markets were completely shut down, so sellers and buyers were looking forward to this year.In Vienna, the market on Maria Theresien Platz opened on Wednesday, its wooden stalls decorated with evergreen boughs and fairy lights. But the vendors were forced to shut down after only four days.Maria Kissova stood amid piles of tablecloths, pillow covers and lace ornaments she had brought in from neighboring Slovakia, where she employs several women to sew the crafts. This year was her first time coming to Vienna, a trip that required months of planning and paperwork. With the lockdown, she faced the prospect of only several days’ worth of shopping, if the market is allowed to reopen as planned in mid-December.“It was a shock” when the lockdown was announced, she said, adding that it was too early to predict the scale of the losses she could incur. “We just have to accept it.”For Daniel Zieman, who ran a gift stand across the square between Vienna’s Natural History and Art History Museums, the story was the same. But he worried about the staff at the restaurant serving typical Austrian fare that he runs on the edge of town, many of whom count on the tips coming in from waiting tables in the normally busy season. Lost tips won’t be included in the government subsidies that will help keep people afloat.“Many of our staff have children, and you count on a certain percent from these tips every month,” he said. “That won’t be there.”The holiday season is when many restaurants do their biggest business, with companies holding end-of-year events, he said. “That is really good business, with 30 to 40 people who eat and drink and drink again and eat again. It’s a real shame,” he said.The Czech Republic and Slovakia have also imposed new restrictions. In Germany, some states have introduced partial lockdowns, and starting Wednesday, the unvaccinated will be required to show a negative Covid test before going to work.By the end of this winter, pretty much everyone in Germany “will be vaccinated, cured or dead,” Jens Spahn, the health minister, said on Monday.A nationwide closure in Germany, the continent’s largest economy, is unlikely at the moment, but Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, warned that one there would drag down all of Europe. “If Germany locks down, Europe is going to go back into recession,” he said.In France, Europe’s second-largest economy, President Emmanuel Macron is loath to reverse economic gains when a major election is scheduled in April. Despite warnings by health experts that another wave of coronavirus is hitting France “with lightning speed,” Mr. Macron said last week that he wouldn’t close parts of the economy again or follow Austria.Nearly 70 percent of the French population has been double vaccinated, and the country imposed a health pass earlier this year requiring people to show proof of vaccination to travel on trains and planes and enter restaurants, cinemas and large shopping centers.The government will now require a booster dose for people 65 or older for the pass to remain valid, and France’s Health Defense Council will meet on Wednesday with Mr. Macron to discuss other options to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The government, a spokesman said this week, is bringing “the weight of restrictions to bear on nonvaccinated people rather than vaccinated people.”Liz Alderman More

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    Thanksgiving Holiday Travel Will Test Airlines

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    Widespread flight cancellations. Excruciating waits for customer service. Unruly passengers.And that was all before the holiday travel season.Even in normal times, the days around Thanksgiving are a delicate period for the airlines. But this week is the industry’s biggest test since the pandemic began, as millions more Americans — emboldened by vaccinations and reluctant to spend another holiday alone — are expected to take to the skies than during last year’s holidays.A lot is riding on the carriers’ ability to pull it off smoothly.“For many people, this will be the first time they’ve gotten together with family, maybe in a year, year and a half, maybe longer, so it’s very significant,” said Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial pilot who is a spokeswoman for FlightAware, an aviation data provider. “If it goes poorly, that’s when people might rethink travel plans for Christmas. And that’s what the airlines don’t want.”The Transportation Security Administration said it expected to screen about 20 million passengers at airports in the 10 days that began Friday, a figure approaching prepandemic levels. Two million passed through checkpoints on Saturday alone, about twice as many as on the Saturday before last Thanksgiving.Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both said they expected to fly only about 12 percent fewer passengers than they did in 2019. And United said it expected the Sunday after Thanksgiving to be its busiest day since the pandemic began 20 months ago. Many Thanksgiving travelers seem to be going about their travel routines as usual, with some now-familiar pandemic twists.“Airports are busy right now, and everything seems back to normal,” said Naveen Gunendran, 22, a University of Illinois student who was flying on United from Chicago to San Francisco on Saturday to visit relatives. “But we’re all packed together, and we just have to hope everybody is being safe.”The pent-up travel demand has elevated the cost of tickets. Hopper, an app that predicts flight prices, said that the average domestic flight during Thanksgiving week was on track to be about $293 round-trip this year, $48 more than last year — although $42 cheaper than in 2019.While the industry is projecting optimism about easy traveling, the influx of passengers has injected an element of uncertainty into a fragile system still reeling from the pandemic’s devastation. Some airlines have experienced recent troubles that rippled for days — stymying travel plans for thousands of passengers — as the carriers struggled to get pilots and flight attendants in place for delayed and rescheduled flights, a task complicated by thin staffing.“We’ve said numerous times: The pandemic is unprecedented and extremely complex — it was messy going into it, and it’s messy as we fight to emerge from it,” the president and chief operating officer of Southwest Airlines, Mike Van de Ven, said in a lengthy note to customers last month.His apology came after Southwest canceled nearly 2,500 flights over a four-day stretch — nearly 18 percent of its scheduled flights, according to FlightAware — as a brief bout of bad weather and an equally short-lived air traffic control staffing shortage snowballed.Weeks later, American Airlines suffered a similar collapse, canceling more than 2,300 flights in four days — nearly 23 percent of its schedule — after heavy winds slowed operations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, its largest hub.American and Southwest have said they are working to address the problems, offering bonuses to encourage employees to work throughout the holiday period, stepping up hiring and pruning ambitious flight plans.Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing roughly 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines, gave the carriers good marks for their preparations.“First and foremost, we are getting demand back after the biggest crisis aviation has ever faced,” she said.“I think there has been a lot of good planning,” she added. “And barring a major weather event, I think that the airlines are going to be able to handle the demand.”According to FlightAware, just 0.4 percent of flights were canceled on Sunday, which the T.S.A. said was nearly as busy as the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 2019.Thanksgiving travel will be a major test of whether the airline industry is ready to return to normal operations.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesTravelers at La Guardia Airport in New York on Sunday. Some got away earlier than usual because of the flexibility of doing jobs or taking classes remotely.DeSean McClinton-Holland for The New York TimesMajor airlines have just started to report profits again, and only after factoring in billions of dollars of federal aid. While the aid allowed carriers to avoid sweeping layoffs during the pandemic, tens of thousands of employees took generous buyouts or early-retirement packages or volunteered to take extended leaves of absence.That has made ramping back up more difficult, and the pandemic has created new challenges. Flight crews have had to contend with overwork and disruptive and belligerent passengers, leaving them drained and afraid for their safety.Helene Albert, 54, a longtime flight attendant for American Airlines, said she took an 18-month leave by choice that was offered because of the pandemic. When she returned to work on Nov. 1 on domestic routes, she said, she saw a difference in passengers from when she began her leave.“People are hostile,” she said. “They don’t know how to wear masks and they act shocked when I tell them we don’t have alcohol on our flights anymore.”The number of such unruly passengers has fallen since the Federal Aviation Administration cracked down on the behavior earlier this year. But the agency has so far begun investigations into 991 episodes involving passenger misbehavior in 2021, more than in the last seven years combined. In some cases, the disruptions have forced flights to be delayed or even diverted — an additional strain on air traffic.Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Saturday.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesLayered on top of the industry’s struggles during the holiday season is the perennial threat of inclement weather. Forecasters have cautioned in recent days that gathering storm systems were threatening to deliver gusty winds and rain that could interfere with flights, but for the most part, the weather is not expected to cause major disruptions.“Overall, the news is pretty good in terms of the weather in general across the country cooperating with travel,” said Jon Porter, the chief meteorologist for AccuWeather. “We’re not dealing with any big storms across the country, and in many places the weather will be quite favorable for travel.”Even so, AAA, the travel services organization, recommended that airline passengers arrive two hours ahead of departure for domestic flights and three hours ahead for international destinations during the Thanksgiving travel wave.Some lawmakers warned that a Monday vaccination deadline for all federal employees could disrupt T.S.A. staffing at airports, resulting in long lines at security checkpoints, but the agency said those concerns were unfounded.The influx of passengers has added uncertainty to a system still reeling from the pandemic. Christopher Lee for The New York TimesMajor airlines have just started to report profits again, and only after factoring in billions of dollars of federal aid.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“The compliance rate is very high, and we do not anticipate any disruptions because of the vaccination requirements,” R. Carter Langston, a T.S.A. spokesman, said in a statement on Friday. With many people able to do their jobs or classes remotely, some travelers left town early, front-running what are typically the busiest travel days before the holiday.TripIt, a travel app that organizes itineraries, said 33 percent of holiday travelers booked Thanksgiving flights for last Friday and Saturday, according to its reservation data. (That number was slightly down from last year, when 35 percent of travelers left on the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving, and marginally higher than in 2019, when 30 percent of travelers did so, TripIt said.)Among those taking advantage of the flexibility was Emilia Lam, 18, a student at New York University who traveled home to Houston on Saturday. She is doing her classes this week remotely, she said, and planned her early getaway to get ahead of the crush. “The flights are going to be way more crowded,” she said, as Thursday approaches.Robert Chiarito and Maria Jimenez Moya contributed reporting. More

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    In This Remote American Outpost, Pandemic Recovery Is a Faraway Dream

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    Tourism-dependent Guam has done almost everything it can to restart its economy. Its Asian neighbors may have to bounce back first.TAMUNING, Guam — Perched steps away from the prismatic seas off Guam’s western shore, a water sports shop sat shuttered on a recent weekend morning, its rack of neon kayaks and fleet of Jet Skis collecting fallen leaves.Down an oceanside road, in the tourist district of Tumon, the gift shop at the Hyatt Regency displayed its beach floaties and fidget spinners in total darkness. Nearby, a shopping plaza adorned with miniaturized street lamps had only one guest: a stray dog sunbathing in the tropical heat. Worn posters on its walls advertised a TV series that premiered last year.“The hustle and bustle here has just evaporated,” said Madelaine Cosico, the Hyatt’s director of sales and marketing.While much of the United States has returned to something resembling life before the coronavirus, the tiny American territory of Guam in the Western Pacific is stuck in time. A year and a half into the pandemic, the island’s tourism-dependent economy remains paralyzed, and officials say a full recovery is probably years away.The South Korean and Japanese visitors who once thronged Guam for its year-round sun and luxury boutiques are long gone, and with their home countries now in the throes of their worst Covid outbreaks, they aren’t coming back anytime soon. The island’s economy shrank by up to 18.9 percent in 2020, and would have contracted by as much as 49 percent without federal pandemic aid, according to estimates by economists at the University of Guam.The Hyatt Regency in Guam has let go about 100 full- and part-time employees.Anthony Henri Oftana for The New York TimesRecovery, the island’s leaders believe, starts with vaccination. Its population of 170,000 met the government’s goal of an 80 percent vaccination rate among adults by July, the same month it waived quarantine requirements for foreign tourists. It has also kept mask mandates, and compliance is nearly universal. Most businesses ask customers to record their contact information, and even small hotel elevators have markings on the floor for social distancing.The government has also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a program that aims to entice tourists with the promise of not just a vacation, but also vaccination. The program, called Air V&V, offers visitors their choice of any of the C.D.C.-approved vaccines for $100 or less per dose.By the end of August, at least 2,100 vaccine tourists will have arrived on chartered planes, according to the Guam Visitors Bureau, in addition to a relatively small number of others on regular flights. But that’s little consolation on an island that recorded 1.7 million arrivals the year before the pandemic began.“It’s not even a drop in the bucket,” said Bob Odell, the owner of a water sports shop called Guam Ocean Adventures. “I don’t think anybody here is faring well.”The island had hoped to draw people from Japan and South Korea, where the vaccination campaigns have lagged, but infrequent flights and strict quarantine requirements back home have kept people away.“That’s an impediment to really growing this,” said Gerry Perez, the visitors bureau’s vice president. “We’ve got a program of organizers who are trying to put butts on the seats of planes.”Tourists during the sunnier days of 2017.Nancy Borowick for The New York TimesAll of those arriving on chartered flights have been from Taiwan, where vaccines have been hard to come by and where travel agencies were quick to capitalize on the offer.One Taiwanese visitor, Yulin Lin, was hiding from the sun under a bright orange gazebo one recent day, watching as her teenage daughters took selfies before stepping into a translucent lagoon. Strapped into diving gear, they were headed for sea life that has overtaken underwater craters named after World War II bombs.Ms. Lin took her family to Guam to get the Pfizer vaccine before the school year started, spending thousands on a travel package that included a stay at the all-inclusive Pacific Islands Club. When she returns home, she will have to spend at least another $2,000, she said, on government-mandated quarantine in a hotel.“I think it’s good for them to be outdoors again. They’re not just locked away in the house in the city,” Ms. Lin said of her daughters. “I expected a lot of things to be closed down, so we’ll have to come back here again.”Across the island, only a few businesses said they had noticed the small bump in tourists. Many are instead relying on steady shipments of U.S. service members arriving for short-term assignments. Others said it simply cost too much to reopen for such a small clientele.At the Hyatt Regency, where the vast lobby bistro has only a few small tables in use and the nightclub has been chained up for months, roughly 100 full- and part-time staff members have been let go during the pandemic.Most of Guam’s luxury boutiques have been closed for months.Anthony Henri Oftana for The New York TimesSeveral gas stations have shortened their operating hours, and some car rental agencies have either sold off their inventories or begun leasing vehicles to local residents at a reduced rate. Independent taxi drivers have decided to find other work, and the local ride-share app, Stroll Guam, frequently tells users that it is out of drivers..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}About 60 percent of the island’s revenue came from tourism as of 2019, and Guam has lost $200,000 in revenue per hour from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan since the pandemic began, said Mr. Perez, the tourism official.“We believe we will recover, but we won’t recover very quickly. Not for at least maybe two or possibly three years,” he said. “If the gods are with us, we should be able to bring in 80,000 visitors for the next fiscal year.” That would be less than 5 percent of Guam’s usual annual influx.Vaccination — of both the local population and any visitors who need it — is a first step.Standing in the basement of the Pacific Islands Club one recent day, Kai Akimoto guided a group of Taiwanese tourists to a line of black tables, where nurses waited to give them their shots. He has worked six or seven days a week for months now, he said, coordinating vaccine outreach programs for the American Medical Center, a local clinic.Guam once welcomed 1.7 million visitors a year. That number has fallen to a tiny trickle.Anthony Henri Oftana for The New York Times“We’re a community that is not so apprehensive about getting the vaccine. We don’t have as many people who have qualms about it here,” Mr. Akimoto said. “Their qualm is that Guam is still closed. And if this is the ticket to getting back to work and restimulating the economy, then they want people to get the shot.”Down the street, the once-popular Guam Reef Hotel tended to a small group of customers, its lobby and infinity pool nearly empty on a weekend.Jason LaMattery, the hotel’s customer service coordinator, said that the number of guests had dropped by about 98 percent between early 2020 and early 2021. In addition to military visitors, the hotel has had a small number of vaccination tourists.“Things are starting to look up,” he said. “We are slowly recovering from a terrible situation. But are we going to get 100, 200 people from this? No, I don’t think so.” More

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    New York City’s Economy Is Dealt a New Blow by the Delta Variant

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    For New York City and its trillion-dollar economy, September was supposed to mark a return to normal, a moment when Broadway theaters reopened, stores and restaurants hummed, and tourists and office workers again filled the streets.But that long-awaited milestone has been upended by the Delta variant of the coronavirus. One big company after another has postponed plans to come back to Manhattan’s soaring towers. Trade shows have been canceled. Some small businesses have had orders evaporate.It is a setback for a city that has lagged behind the rest of the country in its economic recovery, with a 10.5 percent unemployment rate that is nearly twice the national average. Now, rather than seeing the fuller rebound it was counting on, New York is facing fresh challenges.“The Delta variant is a meaningful threat to the city’s recovery,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “This is not going to be easy. It’s going to be a long time before New York City gets its economic groove back.”Covid-19 cases have risen sharply in the city since early July, reaching the highest level since April. Hospitalizations have not risen as greatly, and the death rate has remained low. The situation is worrisome enough, however, that the city has begun requiring patrons and employees of bars, restaurants, gyms and indoor entertainment venues to show proof of vaccination — a development unforeseen when the summer began.Staff members checking the vaccination status of patrons at the Beacon Theater.The city has established a vaccination mandate for some indoor establishments. Beginning Sept. 13, it will fine businesses that do not comply. There are signs of hope, or at least determination. Broadway shows, a major tourist magnet, are on track for a September reopening, as is in-person instruction in city schools, which will free some caregivers to return to the work force. But even as the city sponsored an official Homecoming Week, capped by a concert on Saturday in Central Park that was cut short by lightning, cancellations of trade shows and other big events have mounted.Regaining momentum could be painfully slow. James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, expects the city to add 20,000 to 30,000 jobs a month in the fall, instead of 40,000 to 50,000, because of Delta.Overall employment remains more than half a million jobs below where it was before the pandemic, with steep losses persisting in the leisure and hospitality industries and in other blue-collar fields. Recouping those service jobs depends in part on the return of white-collar workers who have worked remotely — and have even left the city.Many companies had aimed to bring employees back to the office shortly after Labor Day, at least part-time. But those plans have been scrapped. Facebook, which employs 4,000 people in New York, has put off a return until January, while the financial giants BlackRock and Wells Fargo are now planning a return in October.“Data, not dates, is what drives our approach for returning to the office,” Facebook said in a statement. “We continue to monitor the situation and work with experts to ensure our return to office plans prioritize everyone’s safety.”Boston Properties, which owns nearly 12 million square feet of space in the New York region, said about 40 percent of prepandemic occupants had returned to its buildings earlier in the summer, based on lobby badge swipes. In August, amid Delta’s rise and vacation getaways, that figure had dipped to around 30 percent, said Owen Thomas, the company’s chief executive.“I think the return to the office is a ‘when’ question, not an ‘if’ question,” he said. “Delta is affecting the when.”There are some “if” questions nonetheless. As remote work extends well into a second year, and as much of the contact between professionals and clients continues to be conducted online, it is less clear whether some suburban workers will ever return to the city and to their sometimes-arduous commutes.As companies put off bringing employees back to offices, service businesses that cater to office workers have suffered.An empty plaza in Midtown Manhattan.A shuttered newsstand.As remote work extends well into a second year, the eventual return of some suburbanites to Manhattan’s office towers becomes more uncertain.Greenberg Traurig, a global law firm, was planning to move into four floors of a new building near Grand Central Terminal in October. But many of Greenberg’s lawyers and investor clients relocated to Long Island during the pandemic, prompting the firm to reduce its office space in Midtown to three floors. It plans to open two new offices on Long Island, including one in Bridgehampton.“For me, this is a no-brainer,” said Richard Rosenbaum, the executive chairman. “We accept that this is likely a permanent change in the way people work.”At the same time, corporate get-togethers are in renewed jeopardy. Mr. Zandi, the Moody’s economist, had two in-person speaking engagements set for September and October, but they were recently turned into remote events.“People are nervous about the variant,” he said. “At the very least, it dents New York’s recovery, and if cases continue to mount, then it will delay the recovery.”The on-again, off-again situation among big companies, as well as for events like weddings and parties, has been destabilizing for businesses that depend on them.Patrick Hall, a co-owner of Elan Flowers in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, has been dealing with a flurry of changes as clients have grown more skittish about the virus.Soon-to-be brides are cutting their guest lists in half and changing venues at the last minute. One client, who has not yet paid a deposit, had been emailing Mr. Hall about a nonprofit organization’s gala in October for 300 people and recently went silent.Some large companies had asked Mr. Hall to prepare flowers for return-to-office parties in the fall, but Mr. Hall wonders whether he can bank on those. He had planned to expand his staff of seven people to handle an increase in business in September but is now unsure about how many employees to hire.“I’m trying to hang on and not lose it,” Mr. Hall said. “I need these larger events in September for my business to survive.”New York’s huge travel and leisure industry is also having an uneven recovery.More than any other American city, New York counts on international tourists. So the Biden administration’s decision in late July to continue barring entry to visitors from Europe and several other parts of the world was a blow.“It’s just reinforcing that the recovery isn’t going to happen in a straight line,” said Fred Dixon, the chief executive of NYC & Company, the city’s tourism promotion agency.Having written off the bulk of foreign tourism in August, when New York is usually awash with European vacationers, tourism industry officials fear that the Delta variant could keep visitors away during the crucial holiday season, too.New York’s travel and leisure industry is experiencing an uneven recovery, punctuated by the ups and downs of virus cases.Tourism officials fear that the Delta variant could keep visitors away during the usually bustling holiday season.Domestic travelers have returned to New York in rising numbers, Mr. Dixon said — foot traffic in Times Square has been above 200,000 a day, higher than in May and June — but they do not stay as long or spend as much as overseas tourists.At the Loews Regency, a Park Avenue hotel known as a gathering spot for local power brokers and tourists alike, occupancy has been around 75 percent, according to Jonathan M. Tisch, the chief executive of Loews Hotels. But getting to the full-occupancy levels of late 2019 and early 2020, he said, would require a return of business travelers and especially international tourists.“If you could tell me the impact of the Delta variant, I could tell you the occupancy for the rest of the year,” Mr. Tisch said. “It’s a great unknown.”The Javits Convention Center was preparing to host its first trade show in more than a year when the organizers of the New York International Auto Show said in early August they were calling off their 10-day event there. A week later, the Specialty Food Association announced that its annual Fancy Food Show, scheduled for late September at Javits, would not take place.“Given the current significant national upswing in Covid-19 cases due to the Delta variant, we believe that holding a large indoor event and protecting the general safety of all show participants will be nearly impossible,” the food show’s organizers said.New York City’s largest hotel, the 2,000-room Hilton in Midtown, began taking reservations with a plan to reopen in August. But the hotel’s managers canceled those bookings and tentatively reset the reopening for Sept. 1.Still, some businesses have plowed ahead. Genting Group, a Malaysian operator of casinos, opened a 400-room Hyatt Regency hotel at its Resorts World gambling parlor near Kennedy International Airport in early August.After spending $400 million and three years getting the hotel built, the company did not want to wait any longer to open it, said Bob DeSalvio, the president of Genting Americas East.“We understand that it’s going to take a while for travel to fully ramp back up,” he said, so the hotel was staffed for 50 percent occupancy. But there clearly was pent-up demand, because the hotel’s first weekend was sold out, Mr. DeSalvio said.Caroline Hirsch, the owner of Carolines on Broadway, has not canceled any shows at her comedy club and is moving forward with the New York Comedy Festival, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 8 and feature more than 100 shows across the city.But this month, she noticed for the first time since reopening in May that some people who bought tickets for the club did not show up.“We were off to a great start,” Ms. Hirsch said. “We thought we were going to be over this hump. Now there’s another hump. We’re all up in the air again.”Ms. Hirsch hopes that the city’s new executive order requiring proof of at least one vaccination to enter many indoor establishments will make audience members more comfortable. The mandate went into effect on Tuesday, and on Sept. 13 the city will begin fining businesses that fail to comply.Other business owners are less sanguine about the mandate; it has produced at least one legal challenge. And as September approaches, the prospect of business as usual, which seemed tantalizingly close a few months ago, is proving elusive.At the Shambhala Yoga & Dance Center in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a wave of students signed up after in-person classes resumed in late April, when vaccination efforts were in full swing. But in recent days, attendance has ebbed and flowed with news of the Delta variant’s outbreak, said Deanna Green, Shambhala’s owner.“Once we saw uncertainty around the vaccines and the Delta variant, I have noticed a little bit of a lull,” Ms. Green said. Some yoga classes that typically had 10 students dropped last week to six or seven, she said.“We’re really dependent on a steady flow of people coming through the doors,” she said. “I wish there was more of a level of certainty.”Eduardo Porter More

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    The Travel Industry’s Reckoning With Race and Inclusion

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    Tourists, particularly Black travelers, are paying close attention to how destinations and travel service providers approach diversity and equity after a year of social justice protests.Between the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought tourism to a near-complete halt for months on end, and last summer’s protests for social justice, the past year has been one of reckoning for the travel industry on issues of race and inclusivity.In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, everybody from hotel operators to luggage makers declared themselves allies of the protesters. At a time when few people were traveling, Instagram posts and pledges to diversify were easy to make. But now, as travel once again picks up, the question of how much travel has really changed has taken on new urgency.“From the very emergence of the Covid pandemic and especially in the wake of uprisings last summer, there’s a question about place,” said Paul Farber, the director of Monument Lab, a Pennsylvania-based public art and history studio that works with cities and states that want to examine, remove or add historic monuments. “What is the relationship of people and places? Where are sites of belonging? Where are sites where historic injustices may be physically or socially marked?”Monument Lab is one of several organizations, groups and individuals trying to change the way travelers of all colors understand America’s racially fraught history. Urging people to engage with history beyond museums and presentations from preservation societies is one approach.In turn, many travelers are paying close attention to whether companies are following through with their promises from last year. Black travelers, in particular, are doubling down on supporting Black-owned businesses. A survey released earlier this year by the consulting firm MMGY Global found that Black travelers, particularly those in the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland, are keenly interested in how destinations and travel service providers approach diversity and have indicated that it has an influence on their travel decision-making.At Monument Lab, questions about belonging, inclusion and how history memorializes different people were coming up frequently over the past year, Mr. Farber said, particularly from travelers looking to learn about Confederate and other monuments while road tripping.In response, Monument Lab, which examines the meaning of monuments, created an activity guide called Field Trip, which allows people to pause on their trips to learn about specific monuments. On a worksheet, participants are prompted to question who created the monuments, why they were made and what they represent.The statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, was removed from Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tenn. in 2017. Like many other monuments in the United States, it had become a polarizing presence. Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal, via Associated PressIn creating Field Trip, it became clear to Mr. Farber that there is a strong interest from travelers to learn about Black history. This sentiment is echoed by tour operators who offer Civil Rights and other social-justice-oriented tours like those focusing on the contributions of Black Americans, women and figures in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“There are a lot of white people who for the first time have had a conversation about racial justice and maybe even heard the words ‘systemic racism’ for the first time,” said Rebecca Fisher, founder of Beyond the Bell Tours, a Philadelphia-based operator of social-justice-oriented tours that highlight marginalized communities, people and histories. “People heard the new words and now they want to learn. That doesn’t mean that it is backed up with results, but I am seeing a trend in interest.”On a tour with Beyond the Bell guests might, for example, participants hear about Philadelphia’s President’s House, but they’ll also hear about Ona Judge, an enslaved woman who escaped from George Washington’s home, and about the former president’s efforts to recapture her. One of the company’s most popular tours focuses on gay history in the city.Seeking Black-owned travel businessesBlack travelers, in particular, are increasingly looking for ways to show their support for Black-owned travel businesses.Even as the family road trip has made a comeback in the wake of the coronavirus, that sort of trip hasn’t been a source of unfettered freedom for generations of Black motorists because of Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation in America. And now, after a year in which protests of the police killings of Black people amplified the perils of skin color, Black travelers are seeking out Black travel agents, Black hoteliers and Black-owned short-term rentals in addition to organizing in groups dedicated to Black travelers.In fact, according to the international survey of nearly 4,000 Black leisure travelers by MMGY Global, 54 percent of American respondents said they were more likely to visit a destination if they saw Black representation in travel advertising. In Britain and Ireland, 42 percent echoed that sentiment, and in Canada that number was 40 percent.“Another highly influential factor in the decision-making process is whether the destination is perceived as safe for Black travelers,” the survey noted. “Seventy-one percent of U.S. and Canadian respondents felt safety was extremely or very influential to their decision.”In Facebook groups, Clubhouse chat rooms and across other social media platforms, Black travelers regularly ask one another for recommendations about where to travel, particularly about where others have been where they felt safe and welcome. While these questions are often about foreign destinations, in a year when Americans could largely only travel within the United States, inquiries increasingly arose about where travelers felt safe within the country.“I was just curious on some good and safe locations for a first time solo traveler here in the States,” one woman posted in a group specifically for Black women travelers in June.“Where’s a good ‘safe’ place to travel in the States?” asked another woman who was planning a 35th birthday trip with her sister.This type of community gathering, though now online, isn’t new. For decades, African American travelers have looked to one another for guidance on where to travel. The most referenced form was Victor Hugo Green’s Green Book, a guide for Black travelers that was published annually from 1936 to 1966.Last summer, facing an onslaught of messaging from travel companies saying that they supported the Black Lives Matter movement and would be committing to diversifying their ranks and finding other ways to be more inclusive, Kristin Braswell, the owner of CrushGlobal, a company that works with locals around the world to plan trips, decided to make the inclusion of Black businesses central to her work.As a Black woman with a passion for travel, she started making travel guides that focused on supporting Black businesses. Each guide, whether it be to national parks, beach towns or wine country, provides information on businesses owned by Black people as well as guidance about diversity in the area and more.“These road trips and initiatives that speak to people of color in general are important because we’ve been left out of travel narratives,” Ms. Braswell said. “If you’re going to be creating experiences where people are going out into the world, all people should be included in those experiences.”Ms. Braswell added that the bulk of her business comes from Black travelers. These travelers, she said, are looking for Black travel advisers who have the knowledge of places where they are welcomed and can help them plan their trips. Over the past year travelers across racial backgrounds have been increasingly asking for tours and experiences that include Black-owned businesses, she said.Across the country, as people protested against police brutality, travelers demanded to see more travelers who looked like them in advertising; they spoke out against tourism boards that hadn’t been inclusive in the past and formed organizations like the Black Travel Alliance, calling for more Black travel influencers, writers and photographers to be employed.The Alliance and others have been pushing for more Black travelers to be visible and included in the industry and in spaces of leisure travel.Going beyond museumsAt the same time, tour providers like Free Egunfemi Bangura, the founder of Untold RVA, a Richmond-based organization, are offering tours that center on the contributions of Black people. In a city such as Richmond, which was once a capital of the Confederacy, she said that means seeing the value of working outside the established system of preservation societies and museums that are typically run by white leadership.To Ms. Bangura and other activists, artists and tour operators, museums and traditional preservation societies are part of the culture of exclusion that has historically left Black people out and continues to present versions of history that focus on white narratives. Ms. Bangura’s tours take place on the streets of the city as a better way to understand the local history.At a time when state legislatures are pushing for and passing laws that limit what and how much students learn about the contributions of Black and other marginalized people to the country, Ms. Bangura and others said, tours that show their contributions are even more important.“There is a way to take these experiences out of the hands of the traditional preservation community, so you don’t have to go into the walls of a museum,” Ms. Bangura said, adding that another reason institutions like museums aren’t optimal is because some people aren’t keen to visit them. “But think of how often it is that after you come outside of a Black-owned coffee shop, you’re actually able to hear about some of the Black people in that neighborhood or people that fought for Black freedom.”Kalela Williams, the founder of Black History Maven, leads a tour in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward.Whitney IngramAdditionally, although the tourism industry took a hit last year, outdoor activities continued to draw visitors, making outdoor tours like Ms. Bangura’s and Ms. Fisher’s of Beyond the Bell popular. Ms. Bangura said the style of her offerings makes them accessible for all travelers, especially those without access to smartphones for scanning QR codes or those unable to take part in headphone-aided tours.Among the several kinds of tours and experiences Ms. Bangura has created is Black Monument Avenue, a three-block interactive experience in Richmond’s majority-Black Highland Park neighborhood. Visitors can drive through and call a designated phone line with unique access codes to hear songs, poems and messages about each installation. Every August, she runs Gabriel Week, honoring Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved man who led a rebellion in the Richmond area in 1800.“I call him brother General Gabriel,” Ms. Bangura said, adding that in her work, she encourages “people to decolonize their history by making sure that history is being told from the language of the oppressed, not the language of the oppressor.”Walking tours, for those who go on them, also provide a visceral sense of history that differs from the experience of a museum. Even as the National Museum of African American History and Culture has attracted record numbers of visitors to Washington, D.C., tours like Ms. Bangura’s can provide a more local perspective and show visitors exactly where something significant happened.“We can find community in walking together, we can find community in exploring a neighborhood together, and we can find a sense of where we are, we can find a sense of where folks have been and we can find common ground,” said Kalela Williams, the founder of Black History Maven, a Philadelphia company that primarily offers walking tours of the city that focus on Black history.“It’s important to see where things were, how things were working in relation to one another,” she said. “You can see the proximity of folks’ houses and schools and churches. You can imagine how folks would have walked around and navigated and visited each other in a way that you might not in a museum.”THE WORLD IS REOPENING. LET’S GO, SAFELY. 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