Back in the “olden days,” planning a family vacation was a complicated undertaking, involving numerous phone calls to airlines and hotels to comparison shop about availability and cost. Booking extra excursions and reservations at local restaurants beforehand were all but impossible. Everyone had “their” travel agent who took care of everything and was often the difference between a fantasy voyage and a bad Chevy Chase movie. The internet made these middlemen virtually obsolete (pun intended), as most travelers were able to book their flights and resorts online in a matter of minutes; eateries, and their customer reviews, were also a click away. Even online travel giants such as Expedia were not safe; in fact, this 2019 Forbes article served as a warning that Google, with its “Flights” tool, was nipping at their heels.   Enter Covid, the ultimate disruptor.…

What a difference a year makes. When this New York Times article was published in April 2020, experts were predicting that we would not see an effective Covid-19 vaccine for at least twelve to eighteen months – this, followed by a litany of disheartening statistics about the development of past vaccines. Thankfully, this has not been the case; in fact at the time of this writing approximately seventy million Americans have already been fully vaccinated. With millions more receiving shots each day, we are finally able to resume (or at least contemplate resuming) some normal activities. That said, we are not out of the woods yet. The world is still dramatically different than it was pre-covid, and we continue to be bombarded with conflicting information about how it is transmitted and who are most at risk for serious illness.…