‘Re-visit quarantine to welcome vaccinated visitors’

As people from around the globe prepare to satisfy a pent-up desire for travel, Barbados and other Caribbean destinations are being urged to be more visible and more welcoming by reviewing quarantine policies.

Moreover, some tourism industry experts are suggesting that the region could consider allowing people with proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test to forego the current quarantine period.

The points were raised during the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO) online discussion on Wednesday under the theme Peak Position.

Collin Pegler, Managing Director of Resort Marketing International, said since the announcement that the UK market will be opened to travel by mid-March, travel searches had increased ten-fold in some cases and airlines were starting to see an increase in bookings.

However, he said a lot of the business was for short-haul destinations including countries that were bordering the Mediterranean.

Pegler said while he agreed that the Caribbean should do what it could to woo the luxury travellers as they would be first out the blocks, all categories of travellers should be marketed to “aggressively”.

However, he maintained that there was still  concern about the travel protocols in the region.

“It is a problem that has to go away before we will be able to go back to proper business as normal. Some islands are more welcoming than others – some countries have got fewer restrictions,” he said.

Explaining that the average length of stay for a number of people in the UK and Europe was just over ten nights, he said being in quarantine for up to four nights when in a luxury property was not a concern.

“But if you are only coming for three, four or five nights and you have to spend three of those in quarantine that doesn’t work.”

According to Pegler, he does not see the need for the quarantine period currently in place once visitors have tested negative for the virus.

In Barbados, individuals are required to quarantine for five days before receiving a second COVID-19 test, which must come back negative before they are allowed out of quarantine.

“We are all aware of the community spread that has happened in some of the Caribbean islands and specifically Barbados, off the back of people being allowed in some numbers around November and December. Clearly, that is something the community has to deal with and we respect that completely but once you got a population that is vaccinated, which is what is happening in the US, UK and other markets, they have a very low transmission rate,” he said.

Pegler said perhaps the time had come for Caribbean destinations to consider allowing people to skip quarantine once they are vaccinated and have a negative COVId-19 test.

“So perhaps we will have to move into a vaccine passport situation. A lot of governments have shied away from this but I can’t see it is a bad thing. You got a vaccination and you have a card in your hand that proves that you have had that vaccination along with a negative test up to three days before travel, then I don’t understand the need for somebody to go into quarantine,” explained Pegler.

“Otherwise, while we still have quarantine we are going to have some serious troubles trying to put volumes into these islands,” he added, as he warned about the need for certainty and more visibility from regional destinations in source markets.

“There is a pent-up demand but at the moment there is a fear factor as to what you are going to get when you get to those  islands. Are you going to be welcomed, are you going to be put into a quarantine hotel and, in the case of Tobago, are you just not going to be able to go? If these islands want to benefit from the surge in bookings that is happening they have to be opened and welcoming, otherwise that business will go to Mexico and other long-haul destinations,” he warned.

Meanwhile, Vivian Teddi Mur, Vice President of Cruise and Leisure Sales at the travel data firm ADARA, warned that if countries were to implement a requirement for people to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 before they travel, they would need to be very careful when they start collecting data.

“Will it be at the point of booking an airline reservation? I would suggest that we all pay very close attention to how that data is going to be managed and what leaves it to personally identifiable information, because the laws are stricter on how we manage data,” she said.

Mur said the Caribbean was still lagging when it came to interest from international travellers seeking destinations to visit, adding that a lot of them were seeking places that had less restrictions and good prices.

“If you were to look at what is our business outlook for quarter two, three and four, it would be troubling because it does look much lighter year over year,” she said.

She said in addition to keeping abreast of global trends, it was important that Caribbean destinations come with a full strategy to keep its marketshare.
(marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb)