By Peden Doma Bhutia,

The world around us has changed and a prominent question on travellers’ minds these days is, how safe is it to travel in the current environment. In an exclusive interaction with ETTravelWorld, Virendra Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Safe Travel Barometer, speaks about the fragility of travel bubbles and how Covid will now drive more travellers to opt for sustainability.

Travel bubbles, vaccine passports, digital pass, and now the latest – vaccine tourism, where tour operators e creating packages for non-residents – Covid-19 has surely introduced some new words in our travel vocabulary.
Now that summer is here, and as governments around the world look to reopen borders, the travel and tourism industry is also gearing up to open services. ETTravelWorld caught up with Virendra Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, Safe Travel Barometer – a B2B2C tool to monitor Covid-19 traveller safety, health and quarantine measures announced by travel companies and destinations. Jain helps us understand travel trends and how differently the world of travel will change post Covid. Excerpts from an interview:

ETTravelWorld (ETTW): Are travel bubbles an effective way to restart travel?

Virendra Jain (VJ): Travel bubbles are certainly the most logical way to restart travel because it allows destinations to initiate and monitor travel in a controlled environment. But having bilateral relations between countries is just one aspect of a travel bubble – the other aspects which should be considered and followed through are rigorous pre-departure and post-arrival Covid-19 testing. Of course, quarantine facilities and terms are much overdue for an enhancement if destinations want to be welcoming to travellers, particularly tourists, whose sole motivation is to unwind and experience the destination.

ETTW: Why are travel bubbles so vulnerable – the HK-Singapore travel bubble is yet to take off and New Zealand and Australia keep calling off their travel bubble?

VJ: It could potentially be narrowed down to every country thinking what’s best to maintain and safeguard health security within its borders. You’ll find countries across a range of preparedness per se, to handle an outbreak while balancing with its vaccination rollout. So going by your example, while NZ observed strict lockdown relatively speaking, they were late to the vaccination drive as they had zero active cases at one point in time. It’s a dynamic tandem between lockdown versus preparedness.

ETTW: Is vaccine tourism a reality, or is it just a bubble waiting to be

burst?

VJ: Vaccine tourism may not be directly commercialised by governments or tourism departments for the obvious reasons of prioritising vaccination of its own citizens. However, travellers today are knowledgeable and have given impetus to the concept of vaccine tourism, simply because they have travelled to another part of the country or the world to get their jabs. The earliest observations were among Canadians crossing borders into the US, and especially Florida to get their shots; and similar trends emerged in other parts of the world. There are several cities worldwide which don’t require residential proof to get shots within their jurisdiction. Travellers are obviously capitalising on that based on their access, privilege or simply circumstance of being in those destinations at this point of time.

ETTW: Do you see vaccine tourism taking off especially from countries like India where less than 5 percent of the population are fully vaccinated?

VJ: In some regards yes. However, international trips for vaccines will still be limited, considering low passport penetration in the country. Add to that travel restrictions upon India, and then the destination’s willingness to permit or commercialise vaccination for non-citizens. There are various considerations that would factor for such international trips. Equally, we are seeing early glimpses of domestic vaccine tourism wherein people are travelling to nearby cities or crossing state borders to get their jabs, subject to available slots and eligibility.

ETTW: How drastically will tourism change post Covid?

VJ: In the short term, there will be some resurgence owed to pent-up demand. That will be a welcome relief both in terms of occupancy and the rates. That’s just the reality of it from what we have seen in the USA and Europe and also for the brief period at the beginning of this year in the Northern India hill stations. Mass tourism will certainly take a beating over the long-term, in favour of operators aiming for fully- vaccinated travellers. Bubble tourism – referring to families and close friends – will gain momentum. With work from home being a norm, travellers are already favouring long-term stays which inevitably is a boost for non-hotel accommodation and off-beat destinations. Thematically speaking, one potential impact could be travel being more sustainable and experiential post-Covid-19. The retailer had been focusing on the price for the longest time. Sustainable tourism will drive volume and will help bring middle and low-income groups into the travel fold which is great. What it also does is it commoditises travel. Post Covid-19, all travel categories: airlines, lodging, activities have an opportunity to again bring in the experiential and sustainability to their travel products.

ETTW: Following the success of the Safe Travel Barometer, are there any new projects that VIDEC is working on?

VJ: Safe Travel Barometer is a B2B company with API and SaaS solutions focusing on travel-health security compliance. The content visible on our beta dashboard is powered by our Content API, which can be used by distributors, agents, metasearch or any intermediary seeking destination arrival protocols or supplier initiatives. Traveler Health Screening is our newest solution which enables suppliers to pre-screen travelers’ health and vaccination documents based on their itineraries. In today’s complex world where arrival protocols are being updated daily, the on-the-ground staff is challenged to ensure the traveller’s eligibility to travel besides the authentication of their health documents and status. This has added tremendous strain on processing travellers, failing which there are commercial and regulatory repercussions for suppliers. By pre-screening various aspects, suppliers can offset a fair share of on-the-ground processes and mitigate potential transmission risk as well.

Read original story on ET TravelWorld.