The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) recently released an overview outlining the “new normal” of travel. The report provides an idea of the scenario after countries around the world begin to end their COVID-19 lockdowns and ease travel restrictions.
WTTC’s newest plan titled “Travelling in the New Normal” includes critical steps and coordinated actions as well as new standards and protocols. These actions would offer a safe and responsible road to recovery for the global travel and tourism sector as consumers start planning trips again.
The organisation has been constantly working towards sharing the best global practices regarding the future path of the travel and tourism sector. It has mentioned that public-private collaboration between businesses and governments is important to develop new health protocols. These protocols can form the travel experience and provide people with strong reassurances about safety when travelling.
WTTC is of the opinion that the travel sector will gradually return to normalcy in the forthcoming months. However, it is likely for the industry to return with a “new normal” at least before a vaccine becomes available on a mass scale and is large enough to inoculate billion of people.
The council predicts that travel will possibly return to domestic markets at first with staycations. After that, it might return to any country’s nearest neighbors before expanding across regions, and then finally across continents to welcome the return of journeys to long-haul international destinations. It believes younger travellers belonging to the 18-35 age group with less vulnerability towards COVID-19, may also be among the first to resume travelling.
Gloria Guevara, President & CEO, WTTC said in a press statement that it is working together and mapping out the road to recovery, through coordinated actions, and providing reassurances about travelling again is important for the survival of the travel and tourism sector.
She mentioned that it can be considered from past experiences that once the protocols from the private sector are taken into account alongside a coordinated approach, the recovery timeframe is significantly reduced. She informed that new, unnecessary procedures that create bottlenecks and slow down the recovery should be avoided in such a moment.
She further added that a quick and effective restart of travel will only happen when governments around the world agree to a common set of health protocols developed by the private sector. She said that such protocols should provide the reassurance travellers and authorities require using new technology in order to offer hassle-free, pre-vaccine ‘new normal’ travel in the short term.
The new protocols and standards are being defined after following feedback and multiple conversations with WTTC members and various other associations that represent different travel sectors like IATA, UNWTO, PATA, and ICAO among several others.
Airports, aircraft, hotels, cruise operators as well as travellers across the globe will have to introduce additional developed health and safety protocols for travel. The protocols, that have been developed using experience from China’s initial recovery and from new successful standards used by retailers, will be fully announced in the next two weeks.
