Will international travel return in 2021? What we know now

(CNN) – There is hope: summer vacations abroad can take place on a large scale this year.

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

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

There is still a lot of work to be done to smooth out testing protocols that would allow globetrotters to get out of quarantines and find ways to share vaccination and testing information across borders in a smooth and safe way.

Sovereign nations are still deciding what’s best for them, looking at their own health and economics, but progress has been made to make countries globally look at the tremendous economic strength that travel is.

ACI’s Oliveira says the summer’s recovery could mean international air traffic in most countries reaches 50% to 60% of previous levels.

Here are some of the hurdles travelers and the industry must overcome as travel grows:

Eliminate quarantines

Mandatory – and shifting – quarantine requirements “are basically killing the process of restarting the industry,” De Oliveira said.

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

That kind of time investment, along with the confusion about the requirements – both going home and going home – are great deterrents to people who might otherwise be willing to travel. Safety is essential, but the people in the industry are calling for a more nuanced, layered approach.

A testing mechanism is needed to prevent quarantines, says Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the national nonprofit US Travel Association, who advocates a science-based, risk-based approach to reopen international travel . “look in particular at eliminating quarantines if you have the right testing protocol.”

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

While US Travel would encourage people to get vaccinated and test out in places that require quarantines, the association isn’t looking for general entry requirements, Barnes said. “We wouldn’t say you need a vaccine to travel.”

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

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

In many cases a coordinated way of testing is already being implemented and the next step on a global level is tracking, says Priante, “ to make sure that we can share a certain amount of data because if we don’t share the data, then we can’t really have all the information we have should to have.”

Get vaccinated … and prove it

Some of that information would likely relate to vaccinations. The UK vaccination program is well underway. Other countries have also made significant progress and the United States program is slowly picking up.

The confusion among travelers could also increase, as more people move in the spring and additional requirements for negative tests and proof of vaccination apply.

We need a harmonized global approach to recognize vaccination and testing information and share it accurately and securely, Oliveira said.

Current practices – using printed paper documents from unknown laboratories in languages ​​that inspectors may not know or a jumble of disconnected databases around the world – are not ideal.

Even if vaccines become widely available, not everyone will use them, and researchers are investigating whether the virus can still be passed on from vaccinated people. Masking, social distancing, sanitation and other layers of safety will be part of everyday life – and travel – for a long time to come.

Measures in the meantime

Seamless international travel is not possible overnight.

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

“Corridors can be useful if they are consistent, but again, they’ve gone up and down, opening and closing in the short term and that hasn’t helped consumers at all,” said Paul Charles, the travel agency consultant.

The big goal: dealing with strangers

Priante of the UNWTO hopes that the ups and downs will increase quickly, because the world is missing it.

“What I regret most is that it’s all about tourism, which is trust in the unknown … the beauty of exploring, meeting someone you’ve never met before from another culture, another country, has all been put on hold and on the line because people tell us’ trust no one, cross the sidewalk, wear your mask, don’t mingle, ” 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 threatening the industry’s livelihoods, she wants more people to travel safely.

“We want to bring the spirit of tourism back to people’s hearts. Because tourism is about building memories … and we want to get back to that, we want to become the industry of memories again.”