The initiative involves a safe travel blueprint and a temporary international cross-sectoral forum for knowledge sharing.
The forum will allow governments and stakeholders to share information in real-time on plans and approaches facilitating travel.
The blueprint promotes greater certainty, safety and security in travel as reopening takes place.
It builds on existing initiatives and aims to increase interoperability among travel regimes.
International air passenger transport dropped around 75 percent in 2020 and international tourism fell by around 80 percent.
For the average OECD country, pre-pandemic, international tourism contributed 4.4 percent of GDP, 6.9 percent of employment, and 21.5 percent of service exports, but with much higher shares for some countries, including Greece, Iceland, Mexico, Portugal and Spain.
The halt in international travel and tourism is having a dramatic knock-on impact on the entire, interlinked global economy.
“The OECD is in a unique position to help countries coordinate international action in the context of reopening global travel,” said OECD secretary-general, Angel Gurría, at a ministerial meeting in Paris.
“This initiative will help reduce uncertainty and complexity and enable countries to prepare more effectively for a return to safe international travel and tourism.”
Without an international framework for travel policies, a patchwork of national and regional rules, inconsistent with each other, will continue to be confusing and costly for travellers and transport and tourism companies, discouraging travel due to the uncertainty and complexity.
It could also increase the incidence of use of fraudulent certificates and so undermine the ability of authorities to mitigate public health risks.
The blueprint is a flexible and voluntary set of guidelines not a legal text.
Tags: OECD, Safe International Travel during the Covid-19 pandemic
