Holiday abroad after COVID 19

 It has been nearly a year and half when most of the countries in the world has closed their borders from travelers from abroad.

After vaccine was rolled out in some of the countries, the borders are beginning to open up gradually. One of my former colleague travelled from Germany to Czech for his summer holiday. Depending on where you live, looks like travel for non-essential, non-urgent purpose is re-starting. I thought it was a good prospect.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan, there are 37 countries which accept COVID-19 vaccine certificate issued in Japan (as of 27th September, 2021). Which means, I believe, Japanese nationals can travel, possibly for urgent and essential purpose.

On the opposite direction, Japan is not allowing inbound visitors for leisure purpose as of September 2021. Self-isolation period is getting shorter for people coming back to Japan, but apparently it is too early to welcome visitors from abroad, especially considering the surge of newly contracted patients in August 2021.

According to Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the number of people visiting Japan in July 2021 was 51,100, which is 98.3 % decrease compared to the figure in 2019. The visitors were mainly Tokyo Olympic participants. In August 2021, the number of people visiting Japan was 25,900. This, obviously, is mainly the number of participants and staffs for Paralympics.

Compared to last year when the borders across the world were shut down, there are people coming in and going out of countries this year. However little, we are making progress.

How about travel on leisure purpose? I heard the discussion by people from travel industry that it will take at least 3 years to get back to normal, and borders become open for people on leisure purpose. It was like that when SARS and MARS hit some of the countries in the past. Even after countries begun to open up their borders, visitors might still need to go through PCR test and possible self-isolation period. This dose not sound very comfortable.

Also, I wonder if holiday abroad will be as affordable enough as compared to before COVID-19. With all the businesses related to tourism, such as flights, restaurants, hotels, guides and assistants, touring coach companies are all affected by COVID-19, it might be difficult for these businesses to maintain their prices before corona.

I was briefly working on package tours from Japan to Europe before corona. Most of people that I met at the travel industry said that the package tours were not making profit at all. With tough competitions, package tour prices were driven down year by year. I had no idea which sector of travel industry run a deficit, but apparently package tour price has been slashed for years. I wonder if the travel industry will maintain this deficit-driven cheap tours, or if the industry will reconsider the price range in the future, add a little more on the package tour price to make them less unprofitable.

Leisure industry is not essential. It is among peace industry, can easily be affected by war and pandemic. But I hear many people want to go on holiday, whether within their countries, or abroad. We might have to go through a period when countries change border opening policies several times. But as with any of pandemics in the past, we have beaten many virus. After Covid-19 became endemic, we shall have more freedom to travel. Some travel companies have started to sell travel package for November 2021. Let’s keep our antenna up for our next destination.