Retiree travel dreams reimagined

As the world emerges from Covid lockdown restrictions, many people are anxious to resume their travel plans — my husband and I among them. We're just back from a long-awaited visit to Ireland, during which we learned the hard way that continued Covid testing requirements to reenter the U.S. can wreak havoc on travel arrangements and call for back-up plans for health care and added costs.

I’m sharing my experience so financial advisers can warn their clients that international travel can turn into an unanticipated episode of Gilligan’s Island: a three-hour tour that can stretch into days or weeks of involuntary isolation in a foreign country at your own expense. A recent survey by Global Rescue, a travel risk and crisis response provider, found 35% of respondents cited being stranded away from home as a result of Covid symptoms as their biggest fear of international travel.

My husband and I spent a few days in Dublin on our own in late May, seeing the sights and stopping by a few pubs to enjoy a pint and some traditional Irish music. A few days later, we joined a small group tour of 14 people, all American retirees ages 65 or older.

Over the course of the eight-day tour, we visited 12^th century ruins, stayed overnight in a converted castle, gawked at the amazingly rugged beauty of the wild Atlantic coast, visited charming villages and dodged herds of sheep on back roads — the equivalent of rush hour in rural Ireland. As we got to know our fellow passengers, we relaxed, exchanged stories and apparently swapped Covid viruses.

On the night before our return flight home, the tour company had arranged for Covid testing at our airport hotel for U.S.-bound passengers. Two of our fellow travelers tested positive and weren't allowed to return home. No negative test, no boarding pass. Two more displayed cold-like symptoms, but since they were not immediately returning to the U.S., they weren't required to test for Covid. My husband and I tested negative at the time, but we have both tested positive since returning home.

The cautionary tale here is the need for American travelers to prepare for an extended stay if they travel abroad and test positive for Covid. The warning is particularly important for retirees who may have underlying health issues, require prescription medications, or who rely solely on Medicare or Medicare Advantage plans for their health insurance.

In one instance, a married couple decided that the wife who had tested positive for Covid would remain in Ireland on her own while the husband flew home. They reasoned that if they both stayed behind, the husband might eventually contract Covid and extend the required isolation period even longer before they could both test negative and fly home. They had bought refundable airline tickets, so it wasn’t a problem to cancel her return flight and book another one later.

Early on in the pandemic, Americans were allowed to visit Ireland but had to quarantine for two weeks at their own expense at a government-sanctioned hotel. Ireland dropped the quarantine requirements in May 2021, and the government no longer provides official accommodations for people to self-isolate.

The U.S. Embassy in Ireland recommends that Americans who test positive for Covid should extend their stay at their current accommodations. Unfortunately, our airport hotel was fully booked so the infected travelers were out of luck.

Alternatively, the U.S. Embassy website suggests booking new accommodations and provided links for telehealth and food delivery services. But during the very busy summer travel season, there was not a single hotel room to be found in Dublin at any price. The first couple found accommodations for the wife at a bed-and-breakfast 20 kilometers north of Dublin that had no access to a rental car or ride sharing services like Uber or Lyft. The second couple, who hadn't bought travel insurance, was still without lodging when we left.

Here are some of my suggestions for how to prepare for an involuntary stay in a foreign country:  

• Consider reserving a hotel room with free cancellation privileges to begin on the day you're scheduled to fly home. We did this as a backup and were able to cancel our room penalty-free up to midnight of the day when we received our Covid test results.

• Have enough prescription medicine on hand to cover your scheduled stay plus a few extra days. Also, bring copies of your prescriptions in case you need to take advantage of the telehealth services to refill them.

• Store your advance medical directive on your smartphone for easy access. For married couples, this is good advice wherever you are. But for travel companions who aren't married, that could be problematic if the companion isn't the person named as the healthcare proxy.

• Check your health insurance coverage. Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans don't cover medical costs outside of the U.S. However, our Blue Cross Blue Shield supplemental policy does, so we would be covered in the event we needed it.

• We also bought travel insurance before our trip that would cover out-of-pocket medical costs and accommodations if our trip were interrupted.

So as your retired clients discuss their future travel plans with you and how to pay for those plans, remind them that in the Covid era, the rules have changed, and it's important to be prepared.

(Questions about new Social Security rules? Find the answers in Mary Beth Franklin’s new 2022 ebook at Maximizing Social Security Benefits)