THERE’S not a day that goes by these days that I do not receive a news release about a new travel/health pass or some other initiative designed to help governments open their borders with some measure of confidence that by so doing, they will not invite another outbreak.
The day after the International Airline Transport Association (IATA) ran its media briefing on Tuesday about its own Travel Pass came the announcement that IBM and Accredify, headquartered in Singapore, would collaborate to help enable overseas travels and return to work and “manage vaccination roll-out with a verifiable and privacy-preserving way”. The IBM Digital Health Pass will integrate with Accredify’s Digital Health Passport “to help governments and organisations make data-driven decisions as they look to minimise risk and communicate effectively”.
Another Singapore company working on a solution to help the city state open its borders is Affinidi, a Temasek-founded technology company enabling portable and verifiable data credentials.
Its verification solution is already in use by FCM Travel Solutions Asia through its new Digital Health Wallet (see related story) and Singapore Airlines which is testing it on flights from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. SIA said the verification process is based on the IATA Travel Pass’ framework. If the pilots are successful, the airline intends to put the entire process into the SingaporeAir mobile app from around mid-2021.
The complexity of the efforts and processes to encourage governments to open borders in what has become a highly-politicised process is mind-boggling and it proves that while it is easy to shut the door, it is extremely hard to re-open it – and you need several keys for it to work.
A cursory examination of what’s out there shows a multitude of solutions being worked on – the CommonPass (air partners include United, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific, Swiss International and Virgin Atlantic), VeriFLY (American Airlines, British Airways) and IATA Travel Pass (British Airways, Emirates, Iberia, Singapore Airlines, Etihad, Vueling, Level and announced at the media briefing, Air New Zealand).
There’s also SITA Health Protect, which integrates with various travel passes, and there’s ICC AOKPass, a collaboration between ICC (International Chamber of Commerce, International SOS and SGS), being used by Air France.
It would be a monumental task to list all the various solutions being trialled, tested and launched at this time as startups and investors sensing the opportunity in this space pile in to solve the numerous pain points – med tech meets travel tech meets data, a match made in heaven for startups and investors but could be a nightmare for the end consumer to navigate.
One travel CEO dubbed it “the mess of the passes”. And there’s a joke going round that soon there will be so many passes that maybe someone should create a superpass. I liken it to a kid throwing paint on the wall and seeing what sticks, because right now we don’t have time to dilly-dally while Airline Empire burns.
This week, IATA issued a stark warning that airlines would continue to burn cash throughout 2021 – its estimates for cash burn in 2021 have ballooned to the $75 billion to $95 billion range from a previously anticipated $48 billion.
One of the biggest ironies of Covid is that while countries in Asia Pacific have been most successful in fighting the virus, cross-border travel is down on the floor – 5% of 2019 levels last year – because governments have kept borders closed.
Taiwan this week announced some easing on inbound visitors from March 1, but subject to testing and two weeks quarantine, although travellers from countries such as New Zealand, Macau, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia can apply for shorter quarantined periods.
As long as quarantine requirements exist, you can say that borders are still effectively closed.
Vaccinations and testing the longterm solution, critical is mutual recognition of vaccine certificates
At the Tuesday media briefing, Conrad Clifford, regional vice president, IATA said waiting for vaccinations would take too long, between 12 and 24 months, and a combination of vaccination and testing is the longterm solution to helping governments remove quarantine requirements.
There’s a little bit of good news – Vinoop Goel, regional director, airports and external relations, Asia Pacific, said a few countries have developed new rules that exempt vaccinated passengers from testing and/or quarantine requirements.
Examples cited by IATA: States that are exempting passengers who have been vaccinated from testing requirements include Iceland, Latvia and Israel. States that are exempting vaccinated passengers from quarantine requirements include Seychelles, Iceland, Poland and Lebanon. (Iceland, here I come after my vaccination.)
Calling it a necessary step towards resuming global travel, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said his government was discussing the mutual recognition of Covid 19 vaccine certificates with other countries. “The world must be united in our response to COVID-19,” he said.
Therein lies the challenge. Singapore may be keen but others not so. And it’s a quicksand of changing government regulations out there and sceptics say that unless governments are engaged with these passes, their chances of them working are low.
Last October, a coalition of travel partners in Singapore, led by Expedia Group, tried to put together a travel bubble with Maldives, which has opened for tourism, plans of which were shared at the WiT Experience Week event. But even as keen as Singapore is in the battle to open borders, the Maldives plan did not gain traction with government – presumably because it was seen as too elitist, or too one-way. That’s how complicated this whole thing is.
“It’s a mess,” said one aviation analyst. “Governments all have their own issues and every government is different. Even if you have one government that is keen, like Singapore, to get it aligned is very difficult. And one pair of governments is only bilateral – how many examples do you need to make a difference? We need a multi-lateral solution, otherwise there will be no significant movement.”
The reality though is, we have to start somewhere and start solving pain points and then lobby governments to act. If only the lobbying as well as execution was more united, less fragmented. AAPA (Association of Asia Pacific Airlines)’s director general Subhas Menon does not believe having numerous travel passes is the issue – what is required is “harmonisation at the government level”.
It is after all in governments’ interests because economies that depend on tourism – and that pretty much applies to every country in Asia – need borders to open, and if they feel confident about collective measures taken by industry, then they may listen and act before their airlines burn more cash or crash.
Goel admitted that currently governments do not have an active role in the rollout of the IATA Pass but “their role is not to inhibit the progress of it”.
May the best pass win – “maybe the best parts of each will be adopted differently”
When asked which of the passes will win in the end, he said, “We may end up with multiple apps or one. It’s good to have healthy competition between various solutions and maybe the best parts of each will be adopted differently.”
He stressed the IATA Travel Pass, due to be launched in the app store next month, will be modular and interoperable and can work with other passes. What’s key, he said, is establishing a global ecosystem and framework for health credentials to work “so we do not have different versions of the same tools”.
Key learnings on the pilot with Singapore Airlines so far include the need for “standardisation for cross-border efforts and digital certificates”. Some countries, he said, required paper certificates (he cited South Korea) and “we are working to removing roadblocks”.
He said he hoped the framework would encourage governments such as Australia and New Zealand which have taken a more conservative approach to opening. “They have advanced processes within their borders and they are ripe for a tool like this,” said Goel. Air New Zealand’s signing up with the IATA Travel Pass is a positive indicator, he added.
What about those without mobile phones or non-vaxers? How will they fit into the new scheme of things? Goel used the analogy that even with online check-in and kiosks check-in available, there were still those who prefer face-to-face and it would be exactly the same with the travel pass. “Digital will work with the majority and there will be exceptional processes allowed for those who do not have mobile phones or are not vaccinated.”
Would airlines have the right to turn away non-vaxers? Goel said, as with now, “airlines will be guided by governments as to their health and fitness to fly”.
Goel said that if these efforts enabled one more person to fly, he would deem it a success. “Right now, people don’t know whether they can travel, there is lack of knowledge about regulations.”
He sees this moment as a “silver bullet that will enable widespread implementation of biometrics and digitisation”, something the industry has been moving towards but ever so slowly because there was no urgency.
It was interesting speaking with Bertrand Saillet, managing director of FCM Travel Solutions Asia, and asking him why he went ahead to launch its own Digital Health Wallet. His answer, he couldn’t wait for a global solution, he wanted to solve an immediate need for his customers in Singapore – a Singapore-centric solution – so that when borders do open, he has first mover advantage.
In her podcast interview with Kara Swisher in Sway, adventurer Blair Braverman, who has led a team of sled dogs over a 900-mile race in Alaska, gave this advice on how to live with the protracted and uncertain crisis that is Covid – “just focus on the next checkpoint”.
Good advice. We should all just focus on the next checkpoint while the mess of the passes sorts itself out. That might take a while.
• Featured image credit (IATA Travel Pass): IATA
