In a tourism manifesto, ECTAA addresses EU governments with proposals for a targeted summer reboot.
The European Tourism Manifesto Alliance, a group of more than 60 private and state-owned travel and tourism companies, has developed concrete recommendations for rebooting travel in Europe. Among them is the creation of a task force led by the EU Commission to restore travel freedom in time for summer 2021.
The focus of the tourism manifesto is on creating an EU roadmap for safely re-establishing traveling opportunities as soon as national lockdowns are lifted in the respective countries. This roadmap will be developed and implemented in close cooperation with industry partners.
The aim is to develop conditions and scenarios that will allow the current restrictions on international travel within and also outside Europe to be relaxed and ultimately lifted completely. The roadmap for this must therefore be flexible and regularly updated. The Manifesto Alliance's joint recommendations were sent to the EU in time for the current summit, or meeting of tourism ministers, on March 1.
"Our goal is for Europe to return to its place as a world-leading - and safe - tourism destination. As EU vaccination programs move forward and protect the most vulnerable populations, we must collectively prepare for the re-launch of tourism. There is simply no more time to be lost. Preparations for a collaborative approach must begin now to restore public trust by summer. We look forward to implementing this plan together with EU leaders as soon as possible," emphasize the authors of the tourism manifesto.
Overview of the recommendations:
- Creation of an EU task force to restore freedom to travel
- Coordination of travel restrictions
- Harmonization of an EU-wide, travel-related testing program. This includes affordable testing, sufficient testing capacity, mutual recognition of tests between member states and internationally, and evaluation of the use of rapid tests for traveling
- Digital health certificates: coordinating national initiatives across the EU to avoid each of the 27 member states issuing their own certificates for testing, vaccination and/or immunity.
- Coordinated resumption of travel activities as soon as the health situation permits.