Global Travel Industry Might Not Be Reviving Any Time Soon

Since the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines last year, people had a palpable sense of excitement. Soon people began checking out travel websites and airlines grew extremely optimistic about being able to travel again.

The company Ryanair Holdings Plc launched a massive campaign. It was named Jab & Go along with images of 20 somethings about people enjoying their trips. But it is not working that way.

From the commencement of the vaccination, it wasn’t made very clear whether vaccines are actually stopping the spread of the disease. Even if the ones who are vaccinated are not infected they can likely contaminate others. 

Global Travel Industry Might Not Be Reviving Any Time Soon

It was seen that the shots were not proven against the more infectious virus strains like the ones from U.K. or Australia.

Further this pushed the government to close the borders rather than opening it. The ambitious plans of many travel organisers and carries for digital health passports is yet to receive a thumbs up from the World Health Organisation.

These health passports will be created to remove the mandatory quarantines but this idea is facing many challenges. This difficult reality has pushed the expectations of any meaningful recovery for global travel in 2022. 

With only a few months of cash remaining, saving many airlines might be extremely difficult. This delay will also risk the career of many people maybe in hundreds or thousands in numbers. Pilots, airport workers and flight crew might be out of work in the years to come and might affect their lives permanently.

Some are not even working for more than a year. Rather than returning to connectivity in the worldwide which is  the economic miracle of the jet era – internationally prolonged isolation is now appearing unavoidable.

A WHO spokesperson in Geneva, Margaret Harris said it is necessary for people to understand more about vaccines. These vaccines reduce the risk of the severe disease but it doesn’t stop it from spreading. They have not seen any proof which indicates that vaccination will stop any transmission or not.

A travel rebound will soon be happening on its own to be sure. That won’t be needing any vaccine passports. The government is trying to drive the infection rate down and also reduce death rates. Soon governments around the world may get enough confidence to remove mandatory quarantines and other border curbs.

Some countries may be able to rely on the pre-flight Covid-19 tests. The United Arab Emirates have removed any entry restriction except for a negative Covid-19 test to be stated as an example. But United Kingdom regulators banned Ryanair’s “Jab & Go” advertisement as misleading. 

The discount offered by the airline is expecting most of the population of the country to get inoculated till the September’s end. Michael O’Leary, the chief of this airline foresees this point where the entire world would be released from the restrictions of the pandemic era. It is expected that short stop travel will be recovering quickly and strongly as said by him.

For now though, governments broadly remain skittish about welcoming international visitors and rules change at the slightest hint of trouble. Witness Australia, which slammed shut its borders with New Zealand last month after New Zealand reported one COVID-19 case in the community.

Air traveling and the aviation industry is not the current priority of any government. There is going to be a long haul in the travel industry due to the pandemic.

Although the vaccination rate has improved much in the U.S. But the world’s largest travel industry is suffering very badly. Due to this many hotels and other small business related to travel industry might not ever recover.