Travel and tourism was one of the worst affected sectors due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, increasing the vaccination efforts for COVID-19 will help the travel and tourism industry to recover fast. The global travel and tourism industry saw a massive low in 2020 when the pandemic had spread across the globe. A number of airlines had struggled to survive. The pandemic had shut the borders of a number of nations and had led to the suspension of multiple international flights.
The vaccination drives had soon picked up especially in the western countries, which are now slowly opening up to help recover their economies. Ritesh Agarwal, the CEO of the budget hotel chain OYO, while talking to a leading daily said that vaccination is the only way to fight against the impact of coronavirus. Agarwal added that travel is never going to go down and the only way to help the sector to recover is vaccination.
OYO saw an increase in the everyday bookings for the summer season, in Europe, as the vaccination rate here is high. Moreover, the travellers are booking rooms where the staff members have been vaccinated. However, some of the Asian countries are lagging behind in terms of the vaccination rates when compared to those of United States and Europe. However, Tony Fernandes the chief executive of AirAsia has said that he is optimistic about the vaccinated rates which is picking up slowly. Fernandes added that with the distribution and demand being constant, the supply is now becoming consistent. He expects the vaccination rates to reach nearly 60 percent in the South Asian countries for the first dose by September, 2021.
However, it is not very confident about the passport vaccine that would be recognized internationally. A passport vaccine is a digital app on the smartphone that will provide details about the person’s health and their vaccination status against COVID-19. However, the critics say that such a practice would compromise the privacy of the sensitive personal health information.
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