For many SLOHS students and staff, traveling is a huge part of their lives. Due to COVID-19, it’s been extremely difficult for people to fulfill their family vacations. Some cities and countries have taken notice of the hard hit on their economies due to the lack of tourists, so they’ve decided to create a solution: they’re paying people to come visit.
Las Vegas, Nevada is one of the places offering free flights to visit their city. Sicily, a town in Italy, is offering free flights and hotels. Cyprus is only covering all costs if you were to get COVID-19 while on vacation there. Japan is offering discounts and vouchers while Mexico is doing projects which involve paying for two and getting one free or two free nights for every two paid. The only place actually paying people to stay is England, and that is only if everyone stays home for the holidays.
“I would love to get paid to travel! I think it would be an incredible opportunity to be able to do something I love and get paid for it,” said senior Sophia Lindvall.
With these countries offering some of these benefits, would anyone really be interested or benefit from going there, especially during a huge world-wide pandemic?
“I don’t think there are any concerns with traveling to countries. I would just hope countries paying you to visit would be doing everything they can to make it safe,” said senior Gaia Villani.
Because traveling is such a huge ideal for many families, a huge surge of tourists could be frustrating to locals. If countries are opening up more for tourists, then even more people are going to visit and flood the towns and cities and many locals could be frustrated with that especially because of health concerns with COVID-19.
“I do not think countries should be paying tourists to visit. I believe it is a very flawed idea. While it is exciting to be able to travel the world for a reduced price, I wonder if the citizens of that nation would agree with this decision,” said senior Raquel Kalpakoff.
Traveling is a big part of people’s lives, as well as countries or cities economies. COVID-19 has hit many areas hard financially so giving benefits for visiting them not only helps them out but people who still love to travel but are having a little harder time financially.
With all of the crazy things happening in the world, cities and countries are hoping to bring light to peoples’ lives by allowing them to do something they love and hopefully being precautionary with COVID-19.
