Month: January 2021

New Byline! Travel + Leisure Destination of the Year: Italy!

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I have a new byline in Travel + Leisure’s latest issue, Destination of the Year: Italy. This byline is extra special as I produced and styled a fashion shoot to go along with it! When Travel + Leisure’s editor-in-chief Jacqui Gifford told me that Travel + Leisure’s Destination of the Year for 2021 was Italy, I was excited. Travel + Leisure decides the destination of the following year as early as the previous spring. Italy was still in the throws of the first round of the coronavirus. This was before Covid-19 ravaged the U.S. It is an honor to contribute and I wanted to tell a part of the Italian experience that is a blind spot from travel publications, tourism boards, bloggers etc. There are indeed Black people in Italy! ITALY IS A MULTICULTURAL PLACE AND NOT ALL ITALIANS ARE WHITE! Is the world not letting the perception of what Italy is today evolve or is Italy choosing to portray an archaic notion of its culture to the world for the sake of “heritage branding?” …

Bright colors with text saying Could Covid Free Flights Restart the Travel Industry and Rome airport with Covid-Tested Flights

Covid-19 Tested Flights Expand

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The CDC is expanding the range of Covid-19 tested flights. Starting on January 26th all air passengers entering the United States will have to provide a negative Covid-19 test. The test must be taken 3 days before entering the United States. With the strain that seems to originate from the UK, currently, this regulation is in place for UK departing flights. By the end of the month it will expand to all international flights. At the end of 2020, I did an IGTV video on the new regulations being imposed by airlines like Delta and Alitalia for their “Covid-Free” / “Covid-Tested” flights. In 2020 the tourism industry suffered severe losses. Even with the vaccine on the horizon, the industry is struggling with solutions to make people feel safer traveling. Airlines and tourism organizations say testing is the answer and are opening testing sites at airports — though, I found the testing site at terminal 5 JFK to be wildly expensive (over $300 for a rapid test). They are adding test results to passenger records and …