The rules put in place by countries on whether travellers are allowed to enter if they have not been vaccinated will force airlines to follow suit, a BCD Travel executive has said.
Speaking during a webinar on Wednesday about the ability for vaccines and digital health passports to reopen travel, Mike Eggleton, BCD Travel’s director of research and intelligence said, “If countries start to mandate, airlines will have no choice but to require passengers to present proof of vaccination.”
He said that there are already signs that countries are going to make it easier for those who have been vaccinated to travel. At the end of last year, Cyprus’ transport minister said that the country was planning to allow vaccinated travellers to enter the country without quarantining from this March.
This week, Israel has said it will allow entry only to those who have a pre-departure test, have been vaccinated or have had Covid.
Eggleton shared the results of a survey of business travellers which showed that they are broadly positive when it comes to taking a Covid vaccine, with 50 per cent saying they will definitely have the vaccine and a further 24 per cent who probably will. Ten per cent will not or will probably not take the vaccine, the poll revealed.
“The vaccine is key but it is an important personal decision for many people,” he said.
The ability for vaccination to reboot business travel is not guaranteed, said Jorge Mesa, BCD’s director of global crisis management. ”Governments are prioritising vulnerable groups but these are not the core business travel demographics,” he said.
Mesa believes mandating vaccines to travel will not happen: “I believe it is going to be a mix between having a [pre-departure] test or the vaccination. If you have the vaccine, you will have no quarantine.”
BCD’s poll of more than 700 travellers was carried out in December, before the emergence of more infectious variants in countries around the world.