It’s closing in on two years since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and after much pleading by travel industry leaders at home and on the global stage, the world’s top industrial democracies have finally come together with a plan to restart travel.
Last Thursday, as Skift reports, the G7 nations: Canada, the UK and U.S., France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, along with the EU and European Commission, finally hammered out a common agreement for steps to take towards a “future-proofed international travel sector.”
“Under the UK’s presidency of the G7, we are determined to get people travelling abroad as freely and safely as possible and the progress made today between all G7 nations is testament to this vision,” said UK transport secretary Grant Shapps in a written statement.
Leaders agreed to seven “key principles” that will drive global standards for the immediate and long-term recovery of the international travel industry. They are:
- Future-proofing international transportation against new health threats
- Ensuring the safety and fair treatment of essential travel and transportation workers
- Ensuring privacy and data protection when implementing digital vaccination certification programs
- Applying scientific evidence to international travel policy
- Ensuring fairness and equity in each country’s responses
- Continuing ongoing international and multilateral collaboration
- Committing to a safe and strong recovery that is also sustainable and addresses climate change
As the report notes, the implications of principle number 5 may be the most tricky, as it relates to vaccine rollouts internationally, and issues of vaccine equity between nations.
The principles statement says countries should consider, “issues of equity among countries at different stages of vaccine rollout or with different technological capabilities.” It leaves open to debate whether the agreed-upon principles will result in G7 and EU countries relaxing mandatory vaccination rules for entry.
Skift notes that “the UK’s recent announcement that only fully vaccinated travelers originating from a narrow list of rich nations will be exempt from a 10-day quarantine” is a policy that “has received strong backlash from developing countries that received vaccine donations from the UK.”
The issue of jurisdictions recognizing vaccines not used in their own countries remains one of the biggest hurdles to the resumption of international travel - something many Canadians, facing the possibility that their AstraZeneca vaccines may not be recognized in the U.S., can easily understand.
In addition to vaccine recognition, the availability and rollout of COVID-19 vaccine programs in non-G7 countries is considered one of the biggest impediments to industry recovery world-wide.
While such details and implementation of all seven key principles remain to be ironed out, the fact that leaders of the world’s most influential travel markets have finally publicly laid out a plan to restart global travel - chalks at least one up in the ‘win’ column for the travel industry.
