The pandemic's Book of Genesis
By Arnie Weissmann, Editor in Chief, Travel Weekly

Toward the end of June, I received an email inquiring whether I wanted a review copy of a book titled "Covid-19 & Travel: Impacts, Responses and Outcomes," by Simon Hudson (2020, Goodfellow Publishers).
I received my copy in late August. I am, frankly, amazed. It's an ambitious, well-researched volume, global in scope. It not only documents events into mid-June, but its speculations on "the future of travel" have not, for the most part, been disproven.
Missing, of course, are any developments from mid-June onward, an eventful 13 weeks. So let's call this the pandemic's Book of Genesis, providing a look at how, in early stages, it impacted the travel industry.
Though the book is scarcely older than a current events quarterly, it offers deep perspective. In our present lives, where the repetitiveness of days move in parallel to dramatic developments, time both elongates and contracts. The weeks fly by, but when reading about the time when there were as many cases of the virus on one cruise ship as there were in any country except China – well, it feels like a return to an era when we were still quite innocent.

Arnie Weissmann
Arnie Weissmann is editor in chief of Travel Weekly, the industry’s award-winning source of news, research, analysis and opinion, and is editorial director of Northstar Travel Media’s Travel Group, which includes Travel Weekly China and Travel Weekly Asia. Weissmann, who also founded Weissmann Reports (now part of Travel 42), is also a popular speaker at industry conferences, is widely quoted in consumer media and is a regular contributor to the PBS television show “The Travel Detective.
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