Keeping up with changing travel regulations has become a game of Whack-a-Mole in 2021. Fortunately, there's an online tool that can help considerably (no mallets required).
Travel tech company Sherpa (we have no affiliation, we're just fans) is making finding current travel restrictions quick and easy for anybody heading overseas.
Go to the Sherpa website and enter your basic travel info—country of origin, destination, dates of travel, and your vaccination status—using the drop-down menus.
Click "See restrictions" and you'll get a comprehensive rundown of requirements for departure as well as return, all laid out with easy-to-follow graphics, clear explanations, and lots of links to official sources for more information and necessary forms. Rules for Covid-19 testing, quarantines, mandatory documents, and differing restrictions for vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers are all covered.
Due to the high level of detail, there should be no ugly surprises for users of the site. If you're not fully vaccinated, for instance, you will clearly see whether the country you want to visit will let you in.
As an example, American travelers hoping to visit the United Kingdom in August will discover (as in the screenshot below) that they will need to take a Covid-19 test upon arrival, quarantine for 10 days, and follow local masking rules. Sherpa also links to all of the online forms and sites for uploading documents required by the U.K.
The site even has a drop-down for entering connecting flights, just in case a traveler will be going to a final destination via an airport with stricter regulations.
If you don't have a destination in mind yet, you can explore travel restrictions worldwide with Sherpa's color-coded interactive map. Simply click on a country to find out what's required of travelers there.
Eventually, Sherpa and its airline partners hope to make it possible for travelers to purchase any necessary visas at the same time they buy plane tickets.
Visit Sherpa's website to try out the restrictions tracker and map for yourself.
