The world can’t afford to wait for the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, say industry leaders, who claim that travel and tourism needs to restart now to save itself, millions of jobs in the sector and beyond, and the global economy.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), which represents the global Travel & Tourism private sector, along with Airports Council International (ACI), the World Economic Forum (WEF), International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), acknowledges that “public health is paramount,” but believes that existing protocols, such as travel corridors, already allow travel to take place at “minimal and acceptable risk.”
The group agrees that “game-changing vaccines will play a major role in combating coronavirus and restoring international travel in the long-term,” but that they must not be a requirement to travel.
Together with ACI, WEF, and ICC, the WTTC has identified four key measures that need to be implemented to restore international travel safely, including:
• Globally recognized testing regimes before departure
• Common health and hygiene protocols that are aligned with globally established standards
• A risk management regime, and,
• Internationally consistent and recognized travel passes
WTTC and the industry bodies warn against the introduction of so-called ‘health passports’ – as opposed to internationally recognized travel passes currently being considered – which they say would only further delay the recovery.
“Safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines will be critical to combatting COVID-19 and restoring confidence for people to interact with one another,” says WTTC president & CEO Gloria Guevara. “However, it will take considerable time to vaccinate the world and for the vaccines to have a significant effect on the global population, and the global travel and tourism sector simply cannot wait. Vaccination must not be a requirement to travel but should co-exist with testing regimes and be considered as a progressive enhancement to already safe travel.”
Luis Felipe de Oliveira, Airports Council International (ACI) World Director General, adds, “There must be a proportionate approach to vaccination before travel balanced with a risk-based approach to testing. Just as quarantine effectively halted the industry, a universal requirement for vaccines could do the same and a coordinated and risk-based approach to testing and vaccination going forward will provide passengers with a safe travel environment and foster confidence in air travel.”
Christoph Wolff, Head of Mobility at the World Economic Forum, believes that a suite of complimentary protocols is needed to restart travel in the short term.
“Given the enormous challenge of achieving widespread vaccine distribution and availability, diagnostics will remain paramount for the foreseeable future,” he says, adding, “It is imperative that governments and industry collaborate to enable a hybrid regime of risk management interventions which may include testing, vaccines, and other measures as part of a broader hierarchy of controls.”
According to WTTC’s 2020 Economic Impact Report, in 2019 Travel & Tourism was responsible for one in 10 jobs (330 million in total), making a 10.3 percent contribution to global GDP and generating one in four of all new jobs. Recent research from WTTC shows a staggering 174 million global travel and tourism jobs are now threatened.