Will international travel return in 2021? What we know now

(CNN) – There is hope: summer vacation abroad may well come this year.

Vaccines and testing are the way forward, say Charles and other industry experts, but what is perhaps also desperately needed is more consistency and coordination across borders.

“When you don’t have a coordinated global approach, it is very difficult for the industry to move forward, especially when the rules of the game change almost every day,” said Luis Felipe de Oliveira, Managing Director of Airports Council International. (ACI), a global trade organization representing airports around the world.

Much work remains to be done to iron out testing protocols that would allow globetrotters to step out of quarantines and find ways to smoothly and securely share immunization and testing information across borders. .

Sovereign nations always decide what is best for them individually, looking at their own health and economic circumstances, but progress has been made in getting countries to consider the enormous economic force of travel more holistically.

ACI’s De Oliveira says the summer rebound could mean international air traffic to reach 50-60% of previous levels in most countries.

Here are some of the hurdles travelers and industry will need to overcome as travel picks up:

Eliminate quarantines

Mandatory – and changing – quarantine requirements “are fundamentally killing the process of restarting the industry,” de Oliveira said.

When speaking to CNN Travel, de Oliveira was on day 12 of a 14-day quarantine in Montreal after returning from a business trip to the Dominican Republic followed by a personal trip to Mexico. He has quarantined himself four times in the past seven months, spending 56 days at home with no possibility of going out.

This kind of time investment, along with the confusion around the requirements – both to go home and back home – are a big deterrent to people who might otherwise be willing to travel. Security is essential, but industry players are arguing for a more nuanced and layered approach.

A testing mechanism is needed to avoid quarantines, says Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the national nonprofit US Travel Association, which has advocated for a scientific approach and risk-based reopening of international travel “particularly with regard to eliminating quarantines if you have the correct testing protocol in place.” ”

While vaccines are essential, de Oliveira and others say the travel industry absolutely cannot afford to wait for vaccinations to be fully administered globally, making testing a critical part of the process. the equation for safer travel in the short term.

While US Travel would encourage people to get vaccinated and take tests in places requiring quarantines, the association is not looking for general requirements for access, Barnes said. “We wouldn’t say you have to have a vaccine to travel.”

She recognizes that determining who is responsible for creating and implementing consistent protocols is a challenge. “The government doesn’t necessarily want to,” she said, “and I don’t know if the private sector should have that responsibility.”

Yet countries and organizations around the world are making progress in coordinating common approaches, says Alessandra Priante, regional director for Europe at the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

A coordinated testing method is already implemented in many cases, and the next step globally is tracing, explains Priante, “to make sure that we are able to share a certain amount of data, because if we do not share the data, then we are not really able to have all the information that we should have.”

Get vaccinated … and prove it

Some of this information would probably relate to vaccinations. The UK vaccination program is well advanced. Other countries have made significant progress as well, and the United States’ agenda is slowly picking up steam.

Confusion among travelers could also increase as more people start moving in the spring and additional requirements come into play for negative tests and proof of vaccination.

We will need a harmonized global approach to accurately and securely recognize and share immunization and testing information, said de Oliveira.

Current practices – involving hardcopy documents printed from unfamiliar laboratories in languages ​​that may be unfamiliar to those who inspect them or a tangle of unconnected databases across the world – are far from ideal.

Even when the vaccines become widely available, not everyone will take them, and researchers are investigating whether the virus could still be transmitted from those vaccinated. Masking, social distancing, sanitation and other layers of security will remain a part of everyday life – and travel – for a long time to come.

Measures pending

Smooth international travel won’t happen overnight.

Unfortunately, like most things related to Covid, these metrics are subject to change.

“Hallways can be helpful if they’re consistent, but again they’ve had their ups and downs, opening and closing in the short term and that hasn’t helped consumers at all,” said Paul Charles, the travel industry consultant.

The big goal: to mingle with strangers

UNWTO praying hopes that the ups and downs will stabilize soon because the world is missing something.

“What I regret most is that all tourism is about trusting the unknown … and at stake because people tell us’ don’t trust anyone, cross the sidewalk, wear your mask, don’t mix, “” she said from her home in Madrid.

And while Priante and her colleagues have taken every precaution and have continued to travel and work to address the global crisis that threatens livelihoods in the industry, she wants to see more people travel safely.

“We want to put the spirit of tourism back in people’s hearts. Because tourism is about building memories … and we want to come back to it, we want to become the industry of beautiful memories again.”