The dictionary defines the word “travel” as the act of “moving from one place to another.” And that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing since launching EQ Travel in May 2011. As the head of a travel-management company, with offices in Boston and Scotland, I have traveled nearly 700,000 miles in those nine years, and visited 35 cities in 20 countries.
I have seen some great sites during my travels: the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Empire State Building. But they have no more of a memory to me than, respectively, a random French cafe, a gelato stand or a ubiquitous Starbucks on 57th Street. They were just images in my peripheral vision as I raced either to or from the next hotel, airport or client meeting like Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit, always feeling like I was “late for a very important date.” And as recently as March of this year, I foresaw more of the same in my future; a vision of myself leaving on the next jet plane taking me far from home to someplace that was little more than an appointment on my calendar app on my iPhone.
But the world, and my perception of it, and how to now conduct business was gutted by a virus acting like influenza on steroids while sporting the label “made in China.” Like some terrible swift sword, it laid waste to our global economy, including eviscerating the travel and hospitality industry; my proverbial bread and butter. Suddenly, the things I do best, traveling and doing business, were put on hold. And like a naughty child, I was sent to my room as a lockdown ensued through the United Kingdom, where I lived. The coronavirus had the world economy in its clutches and was squeezing it like some giant stress ball. Unfortunately, we were the ones feeling the stress.
Now vanquished to my country abode in Scotland, I was forced to conduct global business from isolation, where Zoom and Skype became my new travel tickets. But at the same time, it made me more appreciative of what I had been missing. Not only the grandeur of some of the world’s great structures, or the many cultures that nourished them (which I had previously failed to pay attention to), but the pleasures of being … home. And whereas in the past I would find myself trekking around the world in 80 days, trying to nurture new clients and assist current ones with travel arrangements, now I find myself nurturing Highland cattle in my backyard. I am also understanding – and enjoying – the pleasures of being at home and enjoying one’s surroundings.
By early June you could already feel the death grip loosening as the world started to slowly awake from its nightmare. Despite some setbacks in fighting the pandemic, if all goes well, by summer’s end I’ll be on a plane from Edinburgh, Scotland, to London, and by year’s end hopefully winging into Charles de Gaulle and Leonardo da Vinci airports. Perhaps even Logan.
When that time does come, I will take a moment during my travels to notice pieces of amazing history, the way people talk and react differently depending on the country they live in, and how something positive, perhaps only existing as a sliver, can emerge from this horrific chain of events like blades of grass emerging between the cracks of a cement sidewalk.
Franc Jeffrey is CEO of EQ Travel, with offices in the United Kingdom and Boston.
