DANNY : DE HEKSo there’s two major questions going on in the world at the moment… Will it ever get back to normal? Will we be able to travel the world like we used to?

Hi I’m DANNY : DE HEK and I absolutely love travelling. I’m one of the lucky ones whose been to over 30 countries over the last 20 years.

Well the short answer to that is of course we will be able to travel. Tourism is a big part of the worlds economy and as many of us have currently been housebound, we need things like holidays to look forward to, to give us a real purpose in life.

But is the way we travel going to change? This is probably the uncertainty that we are all facing at the moment. Over Christmas I travelled to three countries, China Bangladesh and India. I could leap from one country to the other simply with a Visa and a stamp on my passport. Understandably I think they will need some new processes around the way we travel and the regime we need to apply to have free entry into a country.

This is where technology I believe will play a major part of it.

People want to come into our countries and we need to be able to track their whereabouts. Fifteen years ago that would have been unheard of . These days mobile phones can certainly give us the ability to be tracked. When I visited China I had a GPS, this was more for friends and family to keep an eye on my location, however at any time of the day or night people could look at my location and see where I was. It gave me another layer of safety.

You may say, ‘what about our privacy’? Privacy needs to go out the window. No one was looking at me when I was in my motel room, well at least I hope not. However, if I want the privilege of travelling to other people‘s countries, I certainly think I might as well give them the liberty of knowing my location!

Modes of transport that we used to get to our holiday destinations may also be jeopardised. A good example of this is cruise ships, a breeding ground for bacteria but also an environmental hazard in my opinion. I did an 11 day cruise over the Christmas period and from memory the ship used 500,000 litres of diesel and we also consumed 800,000 bottles of Corona. We may need to change the way we travel. When travelling by buses, there are 40 to 50 people in the same bus, one person gets a cold and the whole bus is infected, we may need to rethink it all.

I live to travel! People often ask me what I’d do if I won a lot of money and I’m talking a whole lot of money. To be honest, I’d probably buy myself five houses around the world and use them as a base to travel more in depth in different parts of the globe. I’m an independent traveller and rarely would I take anyone with me when I go on one of my journeys. I do this simply because I have more independence to make the decisions on the fly. I end up in some of the most unusual places because I pick up tips from other travellers along the way, this may be a safer way to travel.

I’ve been watching the Internet and there’s a few people posting the question. When this is all over what country will you travel to next? Start thinking about what country appeals to you most and share this with others because travel is a big part of the world economy. To me it is a passion that I don’t want to lose and there’s an old saying, ‘no risk, no gain’ and I wouldn’t sell the memories of my travel to anyone and there’s still more to come.

So what is my next destination? My next big trip before COVID-19 was Russia. Now I am planning my trip waiting for the green flag, researching what I need to know and making sure my passport is up-to-date, bring it on!