Don't Take That Quarantine Vacation
As the coronavirus pandemic forces more of the world to go on lockdown, people living in cramped apartments in densely populated urban areas are feeling the pinch. Unable to practice social distancing on busy streets, city dwellers with means have begun fleeing hotspots for relatively disease-free small towns in the countryside. The result, some critics say, is “disaster gentrification."
In an article titled “This Pandemic Is Not Your Vacation,” Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen coined the term, pointing to the spike in out-of-state residents flocking to sparsely populated states like Maine and Montana. One rental company in Montana, Petersen wrote, began advertising their properties as ideal for anyone “looking for a great spot to isolate or self-quarantine.” AirBnB reported that they saw a 30% increase in rural bookings in the month of March for the U.S., and the same trend is happening across Europe.
In France and the UK, towns and villages in the countryside, usually only frequented by “weekenders” from the cities, are now packed all the time. In Ireland, families from Dublin are buying out hotels in small villages, paying upwards of $27,000 to spend 10 days without any other guests. Across the world, hotels in rural or even suburban settings are advertising special quarantine deals. One Australian hotel on the outskirts of Sydney invited guests to “social distance by the bay.”
However, experts warn that this is putting undue pressure on rural hospital systems, most of which have only one ventilator; others have no intensive-care units. In some cases, people traveling from cities have brought the epidemic along with them. Wealthy Manhattanites fleeing for summer homes in the Hamptons have turned Long Island into a new “hot spot.” Rural communities have begun to push back against people trying to treat the pandemic as an outdoors adventure. North Lake Tahoe’s website now tells visitors: “We ask you to keep loving Lake Tahoe, from a distance.”
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