👩‍🔬 This week in travel

Here’s the deal: when we can’t give you answers, we’ll try to distil the latest Covid travel-news into useful, bite-sized bits so you can make informed choices about your future travel plans. And just FYI, everything we do send is correct at the time of writing but, y’know, it’s changing fast…

Scientists cast a shadow on international travel this summer
In the UK, members of SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) have suggested people shouldn’t be booking foreign holidays this year, and have told the Prime Minister it could lead to a lockdown next winter. The main concerns are around the spikes in infection in some European countries, and the fear of new variants being brought to the UK. As a reminder, at the moment the earliest travel restrictions could be lifted is 17 May. But that’s dependent on the UK’s Global Travel Taskforce report, which is due to be shown to the PM and co on 12th April. This may of course shift again and the UK's successful vaccine programme will hopefully play a big part. 🤞😬
 
Portugal opens up to UK tourists 🇵🇹
In more positive news, Portugal has announced it will theoretically accept vaccinated people from the UK (or those with a recent negative test) from 17 May (but see above, yeah). Portugal joins Greece and Cyprus, which have said they’ll accept international tourists from 14 and 1 of May respectively. While Iceland opened its doors on 18 March to anyone, from anywhere, who has proof of vaccine or proof of prior infection - volcanic eruption permitting of course!

The EU has announced its travel pass 🇪🇺
The EU’s plans include a digital green certificate to help EU citizens who’ve been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from Covid-19 in the last 180 days to travel more freely. They’ve stressed the pass is “not a passport … but a document that will describe the medical situation of the individuals who hold it”. The pass – which will use a QR code in both digital and physical formats –  is instead designed to help EU member countries manage plans for reopening. How this will affect UK travellers is less clear, but both the EU and UK have said they’re in discussions about how it might work.

First travel pass passengers arrive at Heathrow
Meanwhile, in Surrey, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – the organisation that oversees international flight – has said its own Travel Pass has had a successful trial with the first passengers arriving at Heathrow. The IATA pass is similar to the EU’s, letting passengers receive verified test results and a confirmation that they meet all travel requirements. No news on whether this pass will be picked up by other airlines, but if you’re flying from Singapore to London and you’ve had a go on it, let us know what you think.

PS. You can read our guide for common coronavirus travel questions.

🌳 Expert advice on sustainable travel in 2021 and beyond

Good luck finding your eco-hotel room at night. © Sosharp | Dreamstime.com

Remember the sound of birds in the first lockdown? And the way the sky didn’t look quite right without the vapor trails? The pandemic gave us all an unprecedented (and, to be clear, unwelcome) opportunity to take stock of the impact we’re having on the planet in real time.

So while we’re all itching to get back out there, when we do, it’s pretty damn important that we do it in a more sustainable way. But what does that mean for travellers, beyond following the local recycling bin system in your Airbnb?

The truth is sustainable travel can be confusing. What’s right for one location might not work in another. So we were interested to see the results of Treehugger’s 2021 Best of Green Awards for Sustainable Travel. The site’s been reporting on sustainability for nearly 20 years and happily calls out companies that aren’t doing their bit (or are just pretending to).

They’ve also got good taste. Some of the winners included Costa Rica, for its ambitious plans to protect both land and sea, the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand for a tourism programme that works alongside local communities, and The Azores, which were commended for a commitment to sustainability (duh) and eco-tourism. Other winners include a Swedish treehotel with a mind-blowing selection of rooms and an experience that lets travellers spend the night in the company of wolves in upstate New York. Arroooooo!

Welcome to: the weird world of atomic tourism

An abandoned building in the Chernobyl exclusion zone © Maksim Tikhansky | Dreamstime.com

This is the first in an occasional series about niche travel, unique locations and some of the weirder ways to experience the world around us.

Okay, I’ll bite. What’s atomic tourism?
Simple really, it’s for people who want to learn about the atomic age by visiting notable and notorious locations around the world.

Sounds pretty morbid, what’s the point?
That’s like asking what’s the point in history. The dawn of the nuclear age began with the detonation of the first nuclear weapon in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Since then it’s been a guiding force in human history, so visiting key sites to understand what happened is bound to feed our curiosity.

Read more about atomic tourism on our blog.

Your most expensive (but worthwhile) holiday splurges

© Martinmark | Dreamstime.com

Over on Instagram and Facebook we asked JFC members what the best but most expensive thing they’ve bought while travelling was. Here’s what they had to say…

• “Flew into the Masai Mara for a safari. It was worth every penny”
• “The cheapest 5-day cruise in the Galapagos Islands”
• “Small plane flights - one up close and personal to the peak of Everest and another over the Nazca lines in Peru. Though the latter made me vom, so much twisting and turning!”
• “Tandem paragliding in Pokhara Nepal. I then HAD to learn how to do it myself. Trained to pilot level bought the kit.”
• “Tickets to the Buena Vista Social Club in Havana. Dinner and drinks included. Totally scammed. Extortionate price. But the best night ever! Loved it!”
• “A day mushing our own dogs and sleigh in the Arctic Circle at -25 deg, so tiring but oh so exhilarating...a must for anyone.”
• “Picked the #1 rated restaurant on TripAdvisor in Bruges for our group. Was incredible but the bill was over €1,000 which I’ve never seen in my life haha”
• “Snacks and coffee in Sweden”

This awesome hotel looks like a chic spaceship and is totally self-sustaining

Scheduled to open in early 2023, Svart will sit in the Holandsfjorden Fjord, near the Svartisen Glacier in Norway’s arctic circle, so the views will probably even trump those of the Ibis hotel at Heathrow airport.

But the location is only one of the extremely cool things about this hotel. check that shape out. But while it might share a few design queues with Apple’s $5 billion head office, Svart is very much one of a kind when it comes to design.

The shape of the building is based on a combination of Norwegian Fiskehjell (cool triangle wooden structures used to dry fish) and Rorbuer Cabins (cute traditional fisherman’s cottages), with the whole structure set on stilts, which means the impact of the building is reduced on both land and water.

The developers claim Svart will be the world’s first ‘energy positive’ hotel and will actually produce more energy than it uses. Which sounds fantastic, but how will they do this? It’s all down to that beautiful, circular shape, apparently.

The shape and position of the building in the fjord, combined with a lot of solar panels, means the hotel is always gulping down sunlight to store energy. Low impact materials have been used wherever possible and the designers want Svart to be fully off-grid, carbon-neutral and zero waste within the first five years of operation. Meaning the hotel will make its own energy, and process all waste and recycling on site. Chic.

The designers are so hyped for their design there’ll even be a visitors centre where guests can explore the technology used in the hotel. Which will definitely be as popular as the four restaurants (stocked by the hotel’s own onsite sustainable farm), canoes and boats that can be accessed directly from hotel rooms, and the menu of awesome arctic activities the hotel also plans to offer.

The location means summer days are long, which is perfect when you have some of the world’s best climbing and hiking on your doorstep. And the winters are long, but not so dark thanks to the northern lights which regularly illuminate the valley. 

Click worthy

All the other cool stuff from the web in clickable / shareable / stealable format. Nice.

• Woah. Astronomers have photographed a cosmic web connecting the universe
• Giant manta ray photobombs surfer
• Teacher reviews jokes from the 5-year-olds in his class
• Savvy sushi-eaters in Taiwan are changing their name to get free sushi
• Find out how silent movies made some of the most spectacular stunts
• Here’s how you run an airport in Antarctica

Thanks for reading, Jack