WTTC outlines recommendations for seamless recovery from coronavirus for travel and tourism

World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Oliver Wyman outlined (27-Sep-2020) a series of recommendations on how the travel and tourism sector can ensure a more seamless recovery from the coronavirus travel halt. These include:

• Border openings and repatriation: A harmonised approach to remove travel restrictions, with a previous risk assessment in place, as well as standardised contact testing and tracing requirements at departure;
• Define common health and safety standards: The public and private sector should jointly agree on the implementation of health & safety standards across industries within travel and tourism;
• Strengthen worker support schemes: Provide payroll protection and wage subsidies as well as general consumer stimulus and tax payment deferrals;
• Incentivise travel: Introduction of consumer incentives for travel spending, starting with domestic travellers and expanding to regional and international as quickly as possible and appropriate;
• Promote tourism starting with domestic and regional travel: To capitalise on the initial recovery, governments, tourism boards and organisations should direct their early marketing and promotional efforts to incentivise domestic and regional travel. Importantly, they should also prepare and provide early marketing and promotional incentives to stimulate the earliest possible regrowth and recovery of internal travel and tourism;
• Extend digital infrastructure to rural destinations: Investment in digital infrastructure of emerging destinations and remote areas will be critical, as well as enhancing digital skills within local communities;
• Integrate digital identities: Accelerating the adoption of digital identities and solutions will be key to maximise accuracy for health and safety protections, while reducing bias in border control and expediting the movement of passengers;
• Rethink the workplace: The rapid shift to remote work will require the public and private sectors to come together to determine how to optimise the new working arrangements;
• Stimulate sustainability practices: Develop and provide incentives to encourage the implementation of sustainability measures within the private sector. [more - original PR]