I hope you all had the opportunity to watch the FXExpress Publications combined awards show, The Greatest Show on Earth! We presented the winners of the GT Tested Reader Survey awards, the Wines on the Wing airline wine competition, the Leisure Lifestyle Awards, The Trazees and the Wherever Awards. You can view the ceremony by visiting globaltravelerusa.com, trazeetravel.com or whereverfamily.com; it is housed in a sponsored content post and hosted on YouTube.

When this issue hits, I will be enjoying our annual Valentine’s Day dinner at Ocean Boulevard Bistro and Martini Bar in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. I’m hoping it won’t be too cold; one Valentine’s Day the temperature dipped below 14 degrees and the water pipes froze solid.

Like many, I spent January working remotely (in Florida), and I am certainly ready to get back in the swing of things as vaccines continue to deploy across the country and the world. It has been a challenging year, but we are ready to dive right back into travel — there is so much pent-up demand. Travel has changed dramatically and will continue to be different from before, but it surely will be significantly better.

For now, I have a lot of trips to replan: golf in Kiawah Island, a European riverboat cruise, business trips to Asia and more of the regular trips around the country for results-oriented, face-to-face meetings. Nothing ever replaces them. Zoom to Teams, remote meetings will not stand the test of time, as there is nothing better than breaking bread with your clients and seeing them in person.

I would like to “Zoom shame” those of you who do not turn on your cameras! After all the time I spend getting ready for a video conference, it turns into just a conference call. Many of the Zooms could have been telephone calls, but we all seem wrapped up in Zooming. Let’s hope these sessions diminish as we begin to meet in person.

After 9/11, videoconferencing replaced business trips, but only for a short while. The truth is, once one of your competitors gets out in front of you with your clients — face to face — and takes them away from you (which will happen), you need to get out there and see them in the flesh. Check out Martin Zimmerman’s Los Angeles Times article from Sept. 11, 2006, on the decline of videoconferencing — maybe this time is different, maybe not.

Here’s to a reduction in videoconferencing and an increase in vaccines!