By Mieke De Schepper, executive vice president and managing Director, Asia Pacific, Amadeus
COLLABORATION between stakeholders in governments and the travel industry has been especially challenging in such a dynamic region like Asia Pacific. Presented with a variety of circumstances, the approach of policymakers across the region has been asynchronistic for the most part. Considering these challenges, we believe that the global restart of the travel industry cannot come soon enough for the millions of workers and thousands of communities that rely on travel and tourism for economic wellbeing.
How the industry can safely restart in Asia Pacific is a topic that’s being discussed among industry stakeholders. Recently, a panel of travel players convened to discuss recommendations for policymakers. Hosted by the Asia Travel Technology Industry Association (ATTIA), the roundtable provided the basis for a policy recommendation paper on how travel in Asia Pacific can be safely restarted, with a particular focus on the intra-regional segment.
Clarity of policy critical to restarting travel in Asia Pacific
One common theme from the paper is how technology can enable the transparency, consistency, and predictability to make the process of travel reasonable and easy for travelers to follow. This means clear and consistent border entry protocols and intergovernmental cooperation to reduce the often-complex web of measures that can be hard for travelers to navigate and understand. To this end, Amadeus is collaborating across the travel industry and beyond to make the entire travel process smoother.
Through the Safe Travel Ecosystem, we’re delivering the needed solutions to help orchestrate today’s complex and fragmented traveler touchpoints. We have 16 airlines live in production using our innovative technology Traveler ID for Safe Travel, which removes friction from the travel journey by allowing passengers to validate their health documentation directly through the airline app or website during the online check-in flow. By the close of 2021, a total of 4.6 million passengers had been verified, saving travelers and airlines thousands of hours in queues while at the airport.
Traveler ID for Safe Travel has been built for collaboration, and it’s connected with several networks and partners, including the global intelligence company Riskline, digital health passes such as IBM’s, and medical testing companies such as Centogene.
Restoring intra-Asia travel should be a priority
As outlined in ATTIA’s report, all the members strongly supported the normalisation of travel within Asia Pacific. This segment is the main driver of the region’s tourism economy. In many instances, it is currently more difficult to travel between Asian countries than for travelers to travel to the US and Europe, causing the region to miss out on the biggest driver of inbound tourism. Governments in the region need to work together to standardize travel across borders by building mutual trust and harmonizing travel protocols to restore confidence in intra-Asia travel.
Technology can play an important role here as well by simplifying complex cross-border travel procedures and by enabling the acceptance of health credentials intra-regionally. Mutual recognition and interoperability of technology solutions like digital vaccination certificates by governments in Asia Pacific can help ease the traveler experience and spark life in the region.
The speed of the recovery in travel depends on collaboration, not only in Asia Pacific, but everywhere. That is why we are engaging with customers and partners from across the industry to ensure that we are focusing on the real solutions that will get travelers back on the road again safely.
For more about the policy recommendations to restart travel, download a copy of ATTIA’s The Future of Travel in APAC.
• Featured image: Bangkok, one of Asia’s top city destinations
