Another day — another border reopens.      

In the past two weeks, a slew of countries announced plans to reopen or relax border restrictions. These include places that have maintained some of the strictest pandemic-related border controls in the world. 

The announcements come on the heels of a record-setting period of global infections. According to the World Health Organization, Covid-19 cases hit a new peak worldwide in late January, with more than 4 million cases registered in a single day. 

However, many countries are signaling that they can’t economically afford — or are no longer willing — to stay closed.

The pervasiveness of the omicron variant, which started spreading in countries — both open and closed — late last year, led people to question the utility of locked border policies.

In addition, more than half (54%) of the world’s population is now vaccinated, according to Our World in Data. Medical treatments can successfully thwart and treat severe infections. And, many experts are now “cautiously optimistic” — as top American medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has stated — that a new phase of the pandemic may be within reach.

Australia

Arguably the biggest announcement of the past week came Monday, when Australia declared plans to reopen to vaccinated travelers from Feb. 21.

The news signaled the end to “Fortress Australia,” a moniker applied to the country’s controversial closed border policy that locked out foreigners and citizens alike.

The economic toll of Australia’s insular border policy was highlighted in January, when soon after backpackers were granted permission to enter, Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to refund some $350 in visa fees to those who moved swiftly. As it turned out, the about-face toward “working holiday maker” visa holders was part of an effort to reduce severe labor shortages.

Darryl Newby, co-founder of the Melbourne-based travel company Welcome to Travel, said the pandemic “not only affected the travel sector but every single industry” in Australia.

Pressure mounted when Covid infections skyrocketed in December, leaving an open question as to the purpose of keeping vaccinated and tested travelers locked out.

“Negative sentiment,” which began showing up in market research, may have been another factor, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The article quoted Tourism Australia Managing Director Phillipa Harrison as saying the country went from being “envied” to “ridiculed” over its border policies, with some fearing lasting damage to Australia’s touristic appeal.

The state of Western Australia, home to Perth, is not reopening to either foreigners or Australian tourists yet. It scrapped plans to reopen amid a rise in Covid cases in January.

New Zealand

Another so-called “fortress” announced plans to welcome back vaccinated international visitors.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand last week outlined a five-step phased reopening plan that won’t allow international travelers to enter until July, at the earliest. Vaccinated travelers must also self-isolate for 10 days upon arrival.

With some exceptions, the plan first welcomes citizens and residents to enter later this month, if they are traveling from Australia. Citizens and residents coming from other places, plus eligible workers, can enter in mid-March, followed by some visa holders and students in mid-April.

Vaccinated travelers from Australia and those from countries who don’t need visas — including those from Canada, the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, Chile, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates — can enter from July. Others will be allowed to visit starting in October.

Philippines

After closing its borders in March 2020, the Philippines announced plans to reopen today to vaccinated travelers from more than 150 countries and territories.  

The country suspended its color-coded country classification program in favor of opening to vaccinated travelers who test negative via a PCR test. Facility-based quarantines were also replaced with a requirement to self-monitor for seven days.

Covid cases in the Philippines peaked last month, with more than 300,000 daily cases at one point. Cases dropped as quickly as they rose, with 3,543 confirmed cases in the past 24 hours as at Feb. 10, according to the WHO.

Despite the surge, the Philippines’ Department of Tourism indicated the decision to reopen was related to economic hardship and, possibly, to match the policies of other Southeast Asian countries.

“The Department sees this as a welcome development that will contribute significantly to job restoration … and in the reopening of businesses that have earlier shut down during the pandemic,″ said Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat in an article on the department’s website. “We are confident that we will be able to keep pace with our ASEAN neighbors who have already made similar strides to reopen to foreign tourists.”

Bali 

Despite rising infections, Bali, Indonesia, opened to vaccinated international travelers last week.

“It is known that currently the positivity rate is already above the WHO standard of 5% … the number of people who are checked and tested on a daily basis has also increased significantly,” according to a news release published on Jan. 31 on the country’s Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs office.

Yet the decision to reopen to international travelers — which has been postponed in the past — was made to “re-invigorate Bali’s economy,” according to the website. 

Travelers face a five-day quarantine requirement, though they can isolate in one of 66 hotels, which include many of the island’s well-known luxurious resorts, such as The Mulia Resort and Villa and The St. Regis Bali Resort.

Bali, however, isn’t reopening to foreign tourists for the first time. It opened last October to travelers from 19 countries. Yet few people turned up due, in part, to a lack of international flights and the island’s stringent entrance requirements.   

Malaysia

Malaysia’s National Recovery Council on Tuesday recommended that the country reopen to international travelers as early as March 1, according to Reuters.

Travelers are not expected to have to quarantine on arrival, similar to tourism policies enacted by Thailand and Singapore.

Nearly 98% of Malaysia’s adult population is vaccinated, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, with more than two-thirds using vaccines produced by Pfizer or AstraZeneca, and one-third on the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine.

Malaysia may be on its way toward an omicron-induced case peak. A steep uptick in daily cases began two weeks ago and has yet to decline.

Relaxing travel restrictions

Countries that are already open to international travelers are moving to further relax entrance requirements.

Though Europe is the regional leader in new Covid cases according to the WHO, countries such as Greece, France, Portugal, Sweden and Norway have announced plans to drop incoming test requirements for vaccinated travelers — though some apply only to EU residents.

Last week, the islands of Puerto Rico and Aruba enacted similar measures.

Other places are moving in the opposite direction. After shuttering bars and banning some incoming flights in late January, Hong Kong this week imposed new restrictions, including limiting public gatherings to two people. The restrictions are causing citywide food shortages, inflated prices and a rising public anger, according to The Guardian.  

China also reinstituted strict measures ahead of the Winter Olympic Games, with lockdowns affecting some 20 million people in January, according to the Associated Press.   

Though both relaxed border restrictions, the Philippines and Bali also announced heightened local restrictions this year.

Source: CNBC Travel

The Immigration Department has silently extended the December 31, 2021 deadline for the phasing out of the old generation passport.

The Interior Ministry on February 4, 2021, extended the deadline to December 31, citing the Covid-19 pandemic that forced the Immigration department to scale down its operations.

In its statement announcing the extension of the process to phase out the old passport, the ministry said the extension would be the last and advised Kenyans to acquire the electronic passport to avoid travelling inconveniences.

The Interior Ministry said starting January 1 this year, the old dark blue passport would be null and void, and no Kenyan would be able to travel internationally without a valid EAC biometric e-passport.

However, responding to queries on the status of the old passports, Immigration Director-General Alexander Muteshi indicated the old passports will continue being in use.

“EAC changed the deadline for all EAC countries to November 2022,” Muteshi said in a message.

Kenya is rolling out the e-passport as part of the binding commitment by the EAC to move to the new biometric e-passport.

The decision to have the e-passport was arrived at during the 17th Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State.

The issuance of the e-passport was to start by January 1, 2017, to phase out the current machine-readable East African and national passports from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018.

When this failed — due to lack of preparedness — the 35th EAC Council of Ministers directed member states to start issuance of the e-passport by January 31, 2018.

According to the East African Community, the new passport is expected to boost the free movement of people across the region and it will be in line with the implementation of the Common Market Protocol, which guarantees the right to move freely between EAC member countries.

Article 9 of the protocol on travel documents provides that, “A citizen of a partner state who wishes to travel to another Partner State shall use a valid common standard travel document; 2. The partner states which have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards as travel documents may do so”.

The partner states that have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards shall work out modalities for the implementation of the aforementioned provision two.

Source: The Star

Travelport has been running a slick marketing campaign about its innovations that showcases dancers and snowboarders. But we wanted the nerdy details about what’s technologically changing. So here’s the first in-depth interview with the company’s new tech chief.

Travelport is best known for helping travel agencies sell airline tickets. It joins rivals Amadeus and Sabre in processing nearly half the world’s air bookings.

In 2019, Travelport went private. Since then, owners private equity firm Siris Capital and a unit of Elliott Management have been making changes. Turnaround artist and CEO Greg Webb has been overhauling operations.

In June 2021, Webb appointed Tom Kershaw chief product and technology officer. Kershaw is leading an effort to reinvigorate the company‘s technology.

I checked in with Kershaw for an update.

“(This year) is going to be a watershed year for Travelport,” Kershaw said.

For years, the UK-based travel technology company has run three global distribution systems — Worldspan, Galileo, and Apollo.

It now aspires to run on one platform, Travelport+, with Galileo as the main framework. I’ve heard a rumor of an October 1 goal.

But Kershaw said he hasn’t decided on a “sunset date” for Worldspan and Apollo.

“Our goal is not necessarily about consolidating,” Kershaw clarified. “It’s about leapfrogging to the next generation of technologies across the board for our customers, leapfrogging from a legacy model to an internet shopping model.”

“There are some components of the systems that will be available throughout 2022 for sure,” Kershaw said. “But the goal is to get a vast majority of customers on Travelport+ in the coming quarters.”

One challenge facing Travelport is with the reservation software it offers travel agents. The agents differ on the kind of software they prefer.

Many veteran agents prefer using a classic industry user interface, nicknamed the “green screen.” The agents book trips and service bookings by using specific, command-based keystrokes.

Newer agents, by contrast, typically want software that looks like consumer applications from Apple or Amazon, which use “graphical user interfaces.”

Travel agencies need to appeal to veterans and newbies alike. So Kershaw intends to appeal to both tastes with a hybrid approach.

“We want a completely cloud-based, front-end user interface for travel agents,” Kershaw said. “It will allow us to coexist in a terminal world and a graphical user interface world and jump back seamlessly between the two.”

I was too polite in the call to mention that I heard this exact same pitch in 2012 when I visited Travelport’s headquarters in Langley, UK. I sat through a demonstration of its then-latest-system Smartpoint. The system back then promised a similarly effortless toggling between interfaces. Of course, the company may get it right this time.

The company is also adopting a broader array of ways of exchanging and analyzing data.

Kershaw believes Travelport can differentiate itself in a few ways.

It is adopting technologies and processes to make it easier and more cost-efficient for agencies to handle complexity.

“We’re developing strong automation capabilities for things like exchanging tickets and issuing refunds,” Kershaw said.

One of the striking aspects of the new Travelport is its focus on simplification and its related decision to double down on its core business of distribution.

The previous management’s theme had been to diversify Travelport’s business. The thinking was to make the company less dependent on its core airline distribution business. Some equities analysts believe that distrbution, while a cash cow, is in terminal decline.

The company’s current financial sponsors have been instead slimming down Travelport’s portfolio, such as by jettisoning the group’s stake in payments unit eNett, and investing more in the distribution core.

For instance, the previous management bought Mobile Travel Technologies in 2015. It morphed the vendor into an outsourced development shop for airlines, such as when EasyJet needed help in designing mobile apps.

Kershaw said Travelport would “continue to support specific products in specific markets.” But that group is now primarily working on re-building Travelport’s portal to let customers self-service their accounts where appropriate.

“We’re trying to bring all parts of the company under the same umbrella as part of our broader move to standardize as much as possible,” Kershaw said. “We want to reduce having customization all over the place — while still allowing for regional and customer-specific solutions.”

“That group is really charged with building out self-service tools for agencies who need to make changes to accounts at all times of the day,” Kershaw said.

Kershaw has a few principles that animate his plans for Travelport. “Less is more” is one of the them.

A case in point: Like its peer companies, Travelport must cope with a fast growing array of airline products, such as the bundling of seats with ancillary services like free checked luggage.

“In travel, we have this explosion of options, and every airline has a different view of how they want to approach this,” Kershaw said. “We in the travel industry need to use machine learning to help pick the correct, relevant bundle for any given user.”

Travelport does face rising upstarts as fresh competitors, including Duffel on the distribution front and Aeronology in the agency ticket servicing front. But the company has said it has been making strides, especially versus its traditional peers such as Sabre.

“We’re very happy with the feedback we’re getting from customers about how we’re onboarding new content quickly and effectively,” Kershaw said.

Kershaw believes that the airline sector could do a better job with standardization in distribution and selling.

The New Distribution Capability, or NDC, is a shorthand for an airline effort to attempt to standardize how airline content is distributed and displayed to agencies and end-users.

“I don’t think the industry has done a good enough job with standardization,” Kershaw said. “There’s too much customization and variation, with everyone interpreting the standards in different ways, which is holding back the industry’s velocity in adopting modern retailing.”

Kershaw has experience with this issue. He founded Prebid as an open-source, unified auction for programmatic advertising.

“The travel industry could learn more from how other verticals have approached standardization,” Kershaw said. “I’m not saying that travel’s terrible at this. But I think we can do a better job cooperating and developing standards faster.“

To give some context, a decade ago, independent advertising technology platforms were stabbing each other in the eyeballs over technical application issues while Google took market share from everyone. About a half-dozen years ago, Google became the only real choice for publishers to monetize with ads.

Kershaw blamed the problem on a lack of standardization from design and technical perspectives. He helped create Prebid on the theory that publishers needed a competitive option to Google’s auctions.

In a key point for engineering nerds, Kershaw doesn’t believe Travelport’s goal should be to universally adopt a particular class of API, or application programming interface.

Travelport embraced the use of APIs years ago because they enable much better capabilities for sales and data analytics. But APIs come in different flavors.

“I don’t want to leave the impression that the endgame is all about moving everything from quote-unquote ‘legacy APIs’ like SOAP to Rest APIs like JSON [JavaScript Object Notation, or probably the most widely used data format for data interchange in ecommerce],” Kershaw said.

“The plan isn’t to port everything to JSON and then pop Champagne,” Kershaw said. “Our intermediate-term goal is instead to get everything on a single well-documented family of APIs. We also want those APIs to be easy to consume, meaning friendly for developers to use for executing agency workflows.”

Cynics might wonder if Kershaw has adopted that position because Travelport doesn’t have the resources for a full shift.

After all, Travelport hasn’t generated as much cash as its financial sponsors expected it would have by now because of a botched sale of its stake in payments firm eNett.

Regarding eNett selling for only $577.5 million instead of $1.7 billion or more, a Travelport spokesperson responded: “We (leadership and owners) reached an agreement that, all things considered, was right for all parties. The close of the transaction allowed us to focus on our core business and invest further in Travelport.”

I didn’t ask Kershaw about resources. But he volunteered that practicalities dictate his company’s technology policy. Travelport has an array of functions that need a breadth of APIs, Kershaw said.

For example, its search function for airfare content demands APIs that can handle a huge amount of data volumes. That might require one type of API. But the company’s other tasks, such as letting an agent check a passenger name record or void a transaction, happen with less frequency — yet require a lot of customization for agency-specific workflows. So those tasks might need other types of APIs, Kershaw said.

“APIs are a journey, not a destination,” Kershaw said. “The evolution is ongoing, with people talking already about GraphQL and other newer technologies.”

A mistake Kershaw is trying to avoid is being one of those companies that’s in a rush to roll out “features, features, features.”

Kershaw said some organizations at companies outside and inside travel overlook how developers need support to help maintain data feeds at a high standard of performance.

“Non-experts tend to think about APIs as either they work or don’t work,” Kershaw said. “But if an API degrades over time, there can be subtle hits to performance that have negative impacts for travel agents. So it’s critical that speed and synchronization are in your design from the beginning.”

“That’s why we’re focused on ‘provisioning,’ or having a unified, alarming and monitoring capability for developers,” Kershaw said.

Some industry experts will agree that a focus on building “features, features, features” without a focus on support and maintenance can lead to problems down the line.

In one rumored example, I’ve been hearing scattered complaints recently about technology Accelya acquired from a vendor formerly called Farelogix. Some developers are nicknaming it “Failogix,” claiming they see increasing glitches — though Accelya hasn’t heard this and reports high retention rates and sales.

Hiring top developers is critical for Travelport to stay ahead.

“The travel sector faces an explosion of options coming into the ecosystem and a growing demand for smoother travel experiences,” Kershaw said.

“These are the kinds of challenges that excite the best engineeers,” Kershaw said. “Think about how people used to book taxis and short-term rentals and then Uber and Airbnb came along. Air travel and hotel booking are the next sectors that will experience this revolution of next-gen internet shopping.”

Kershaw, based in California, has been getting to know the company’s developers in Denver and Atlanta.

To help further associate its name with innovation, Travelport ran a contest with AWS (Amazon Web Services) to give prizes for the most interesting travel startups, picking two winners late last year.

Source: Skift

The travel industry has faced new restrictions, canceled trips, destination closures and job losses over the past year. What can we expect in 2022?

CBS News senior travel adviser Peter Greenberg shares his expectations and how travelers should prepare.

Flight prices will drop in January

After January 4, air traffic historically drops, so prices will likely be lower than they are now, Greenberg said.  

“If I wanted to book a round-trip ticket this morning from New York to Los Angeles, assuming I could even get on a plane, that round-trip fare is $700. January 5: $132,” he said Tuesday on “CBS Mornings.” “I also priced out a Dallas to New York trip on January 5. It was $32. The cab ride to the airport is more expensive.”

Airlines won’t mandate vaccines on their own

While some airline CEOs support a vaccine mandate for travelers, none of them want to be the only airline to implement it, Greenberg said.

“They’re waiting for the Biden administration to make that rule,” he said. “[The administration’s] not about to make that rule right now because their other vaccination mandate is being challenged in the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court. So, until that’s resolved, it’s dead on arrival.”

Airline miles will lose value

During the pandemic, companies realized their frequent flyer programs were worth more than the airlines themselves, Greenberg said.

“They actually mortgaged their programs from between $6 and $10 billion each airline. That’s a lot of debt,” he said. 

To deal with that debt, the airlines will start to devalue frequent flyer miles and make it harder to earn and redeem them, he said. So, if you have a lot of miles, Greenberg recommends using them as soon as possible.

“Start today. Look out about 330 days, as far out as that, and redeem miles as much as you can because starting in January, that devaluation parade is going to start and it’s not going to be pretty,” he said.

Hotel rates could be negotiable 

Expect to pay more for hotels in the next year. But if you’re willing to make a phone call, rather than book online, you may be able to negotiate the rate, Greenberg said. 

“It’s not the posted rate that counts, it’s all the ancillary rates about whether you’re going to have to pay for the water, or the Wi-Fi, or the parking,” he said, adding, “as more hotels open with the same continuing staff shortages, it’s going to be a much more competitive marketplace. They’ll be much more willing to negotiate because any revenue is better than no revenue.”

Restaurants will raise prices

“Expect to pay more for your menu,” Greenberg said. “Every menu item price is going up, and a lot of things that never used to be on the menu as a charged item — they’re going to be on that.”

This is because many restaurants have been facing staffing issues that are expected to continue. They’ll have to incentivize workers with higher wages, perks and benefits, Greenberg said.

“That’s going to all translate into higher menu prices, not just on the entrees, but what used to come on your dish is now going to be charged as a side order. Even the bread basket is going to be a paid item.”

Source: CBS News

Asia will reopen to travel as more is learned about the Omicron variant, with the recent tightening of borders only a “temporary speed bump” on the road to recovery, according to a top airline industry representative.

In an exclusive interview, Philip Goh, regional head of the International Air Transport Association, told Al Jazeera he was optimistic about the resumption of travel in Asia in 2022 despite the region’s doubling down on travel restrictions in response to the variant.

“People miss travel and they want to travel. You cannot substitute a hug, a handshake with a virtual zoom call,” Goh said. “Nor can videos capture and invigorate the senses stimulated by the sights, sounds and scents of the places we travel to.”

Goh, IATA vice president for Asia-Pacific, said governments in the region that had banked on isolation to control COVID-19 more than any other part of the world would ultimately reopen because “their citizens want to travel and are asking for it”.

“They also understand the need for economies dependent on global commerce and trade to re-establish trade lanes and to allow connectivity to again flourish,” Goh said.

“This is a temporary set-back,” added Goh, who attributed Asia’s strict border policies to the “risk adverse nature of the region and memories of the SARS pandemic in 2003”.

“We are optimistic that plans to restart international travel will resume when more is learnt about Omicron.”

Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have reintroduced tough travel curbs in response to Omicron, while mainland China, Hong Kong and New Zealand have doubled down on existing ultra-strict border controls.

The region’s deepening isolation comes as countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada ease testing and isolation rules amid growing acknowledgement that efforts to tightly control the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron strain have become too disruptive to everyday life.

Although Omicron is believed to be two to three times more transmissible than the Delta variant, the coronavirus strain has been associated with milder illness.

In a study published in The Lancet on Wednesday, South African researchers found that just 4.9 percent of cases during the most recent wave in the province of Gauteng were hospitalised, compared with 18.9 percent during the second wave. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, also found that patients were 73 percent less likely to have severe disease than those admitted during the country’s third wave, which was dominated by the Delta variant.

On Thursday, the South African government announced that its Omicron wave had peaked with no significant uptick in deaths. In the UK, where the daily number of COVID-19 cases is still breaking records, the number of patients in ventilation beds is less than one-quarter of their peak in January.

Even before the variant’s arrival, the Asia-Pacific had yet to see any meaningful rebound in travel. Air traffic in the region was down 92.8 percent in October compared with October 2019, according to IATA data. By comparison, travel in North America and Europe was down just 57 percent and 50.6 percent, respectively, in the same period.

‘Desire to travel’

While credited with reducing deaths from COVID-19, the region’s isolation has decimated travel-reliant industries such as tourism, separated families, upended plans for study, work and migration, and disrupted supply chains.

Earlier this month, IATA Director General Willie Walsh criticised governments that introduced travel bans in response to Omicron for “putting at risk the global connectivity it has taken so long to rebuild”.

In November, the IATA released a blueprint for restarting international travel that called on authorities to adopt “simple, consistent, and predictable” measures. The proposals included removing all hurdles for vaccinated travellers and allowing quarantine-free travel for passengers who are not vaccinated but have a negative antigen test result.

Goh said the effective shutdown of the region’s aviation had highlighted the “immense importance of aviation in our lives, which is often taken for granted”.

“People have missed not being able to connect with friends and family. People feel worse-off in terms of life experiences gained through exploring new cultures or obtaining an overseas education,” he said. “The fact that travel bookings surged whenever border reopening is announced reveal the desire to travel.”

Goh said there was a need for more balanced discussion about the costs of fighting COVID-19.

“That’s why we need governments to look at reopening borders, allowing the free flow of air travel without quarantine by treating COVID-19 as an endemic disease and managing it through testing and vaccination,” he said.

Source: AL JAZEERA

United Arab Emirates (UAE) has extended the ban on Kenyan travelling to its territory indefinitely, restricting inbound flights from Nairobi and a host of other African countries.

In a notice, Emirates Airlines announced that it has extended the ban, which was to end on the eve of Christmas, until further notice.

The Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) had announced a 48-hour suspension on all flights from Kenya to the Middle East nation on December 20, but on Wednesday, the Dubai-based carrier said that it has, in turn, extended its flights from Kenya suspension to comply with the directive that was to end on December 24.

“Until further notice, flights to and from Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda are suspended. Passengers who have been in or transited through these countries in the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter or transit through Dubai,” said the notice from the airline.

The move is the latest restriction on global travel by UAE aimed at limiting the spread of Covid-19 in the wake of the new Omicron variant.

The directive comes as a blow to the national carrier Kenya Airways, which had seen an increase in bookings on this route occasioned by the ongoing Dubai Expo 2020 exhibition.

Kenya Airways suspended passenger flights to Dubai on Tuesday last week in line with the directive.

The national carrier said it would refund passengers who had booked tickets for travel within the suspension period. The travellers will also be allowed to rebook when flights resume.

The suspension came days after Dubai introduced new travel requirements for direct flights from Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

Under the new measures, travellers from Africa were required to provide a PCR test result conducted at the airport six hours before departure for Dubai.

In addition, travellers were to self-quarantine until they received a negative Covid-19 test certificate issued within 48 hours of arrival in Dubai.

Kenya has seen coronavirus resurgence with a rapidly rising caseload since confirmation of the highly infectious Omicron variant last week.

The positivity rate — the ratio of positive tests — rose to 34 percent on Wednesday, which is among the highest levels since Kenya recorded the first coronavirus case on March 12 last year.

The surge in global coronavirus infections has seen many countries tighten restrictions to curb the spread of the Omicron variant.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) labels a country to be a high risk if the positivity rate rises above five percent and advises countries to consider restrictions if it remains above the limit for at least 14 days.

Source: Business Daily

Opening up Africa’s borders to travel will drive investment and an economic rebound, according to the authors of the 2021 Africa Visa Openness Index.

Published yearly since 2016, the Index measures African countries’ openness to travellers from elsewhere on the continent. This year’s edition found that the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic substantially impacted free movement. “In this new era of travel, safety and hygiene protocols have become as important as travel documentation and visa formalities,” said the report, jointly released by the African Development Bank and the African Union Commission on Monday, 13 December.

“The evidence is clear: the countries that make it simpler for Africa’s business people, tourists, students, and workers to visit their territories, are the countries that stand to attract more investment and talent. They are the countries whose economies will recover quickly,” said Khaled Sherif, the African Development Bank’s Vice-President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery.

Monique Nsanzabaganwa, Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, said: “The Covid-19 crisis has made one thing very certain: Africa needs to be more self-sufficient. To get there, we need to boost intra-African trade, and that means fewer visa restrictions.”

The 2021 Visa Openness Index also makes a compelling case for streamlining the visa process for young Africans. “All young people need is the freedom to move around the continent and support as they develop into Africa’s entrepreneurs and business leaders,” it stated.

Key findings

The Index shows that 36 countries have improved or maintained their Visa Openness Index score since 2016. Over 80% of the countries that have made gains in openness are low-income or lower-middle-income countries. The report mentioned Namibia, Morocco, and Tunisia as countries that have made the most progress in visa openness.

Overall, Africa is almost evenly split between countries with a liberal visa policy and those that partially restrict entry from other African states. A quarter of African countries welcome some or all African visitors visa-free; another quarter, roughly, permit some or all African visitors to obtain a visa on arrival. Twenty-four countries offer electronic visas, up from 15 five years ago.

The Africa Visa Openness Index aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the Protocol on the Free Movement of People and, in particular, advances the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, with a market of 1.3 billion people.

“By supporting the free movement of people, we make it easier for Africans to do business in Africa. Free movement of people, especially workers, could help plug skills gaps, while enabling countries to fix skills mismatches in their labour markets,” said Jean-Guy Afrika, the Officer-In-Charge of the Regional Integration Coordination Office at the African Development Bank.

Click here (https://bit.ly/3EYX3YZ) to download the 2021 Africa Visa Openness Report and find out more.

Source: Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB).

Fewer trips to India and other “medical tourism” destinations by Africa’s middle class is one anticipated result of a surge of investment into medical facilities, says a just-released report, which also highlights the opportunity for these facilities to mint money treating lifestyle diseases as Africa’s middle class rapidly expands.

The number of Africa’s own regional medical tourism destinations is also seen rising beyond South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia—which currently have the most advanced medical facilities on the continent—according to Research and Market’s Medical tourism 2022: Africa potential.

According to the report, “winds of change are sweeping across African medical tourism.” 11 countries top a list of those looking to take in more patients from other jurisdictions within Africa—as well as outside the continent—in the coming year.

“Once seen as just a source for other medical tourism destinations, some African countries have taken stock and have or will seek to increase inbound medical tourism and reduce outbound medical tourism,” says the report.

Newer hubs are coming up in Africa for medical tourism

Algeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania are newly-listed markets with the potential to help the continent save millions of dollars spent every year in the world’s key medical tourism markets, like India and the UK.

“Outbound medical tourism costs African countries millions of dollars in exchange revenue so they seek to fight back,” according to the report.

The Research and Markets report shows that Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Congo, and Eswatini are among 12 local sources that could significantly boost intra-Africa tourism and trade revenues. Ethiopia, Lesotho Libya, Mozambique Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are also key medical tourism sources that do not fall under either potential or existing destinations.

“Medical tourism in 2022 and beyond will not be a restart of how it was left in 2019 and earlier as there is no guarantee that previous trends will return,” says the report.

The report analyzes how different countries are improving healthcare as well as how medical tourism and insurance plans offered by both private and government institutions are changing and says that the pandemic has changed rules of engagement ‘forever’.

Since the outbreak of covid-19, African countries have been aggressively putting up more modern and advanced medical facilities as top medical researchers return to the continent to bolster the local capacity of medical research.

Last month, Kenya launched its Integrated Molecular Imaging Center and Hospitality Center, a cancer treatment center equipped with a 100-person hostel facility. Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta said it will save Kenyans the over $89 million they spend on cancer treatment outside the country each year.

Ghana made history by building a 100-bed capacity infectious Disease Center (GIDC)—now a referral for patients in need of intensive critical care—during the pandemic, by leveraging private sector and government funding. Last year, the west African country also announced plans to build a 1100-bed health institution dubbed Eco Medical Village to position itself as the next medical tourism destination for Africans.

Investment into medical facilities in Africa has also seen regional investment, with Egypt’s Minister of Health and Population Hala Zayed flying to Uganda in October to witness the inauguration of the AFRI Egypt Medical Centre, an Egyptian investment in high tech health facilities in Jinja.

In August, Rwanda and Senegal were picked by covid-19 vaccine maker BioNTech for local production of malaria and tuberculosis vaccines. Nigeria also launched Africa’s first private lab for human whole-genome sequencing, following a $15 million fundraise by start-up, 54Gene last year.

Meanwhile, medical professionals who might previously have flown abroad to look for greener pastures are opting to stay home. Some, like medical doctor and entrepreneur, Maxwell Okoth, founder of the 100-bed Ruai Family Hospital in Kenya, have begun investing in private medical facilities, instead.

These trends, together with plans by the Africa Union and Africa Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) to build local capacity to manufacture 60% of covid-19 vaccines locally by 2040, looks set to shift the face of Africa’s medical tourism.

Medical Tourism Index 2020/2021 by Medical Tourism Association tracks the world’s top 46 medical tourism destinations. It ranks South Africa (22), Egypt (26), Morocco (31) and Tunisia (38) as the top destinations in Africa.

Source: Quartz Africa

Nairobi –September 23, 2021: The International Air Transport Association (IATA)’s Regional Vice President for Africa and Middle East, Mr. Kamil Al-Awadhi paid a courtesy visit to the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) to discuss a closer collaboration between IATA and the travel agents in Kenya as an effort to fast track the recovery of Kenya’s aviation and tourism sectors. Al-Awadhi’s visit comes at a time when the Kenya market was migrating to the New Generation of IATA settlement system (NGISS), a system that seeks to modernize the current billing and settlement plan that travel agents are using to settle payments for air tickets to IATA.

Al-Awadhi was received by KATA CEO Ms. Agnes Mucuha and other board representatives. Ms. Mucuha called on IATA to support KATA members with familiarizing with the New Generation of IATA settlement system (NGISS), during this transition period.

Ms. Mucuha also called on IATA to support KATA in conducting professional training for Agents to strengthen their knowledge and skills and accelerate the digitalisation of their businesses through the establishment of E-commerce platforms that will provide Agents with a wider reach to customers.  She called upon IATA to collaborate with KATA in the advocacy on the open skies implementation within the African continent in order to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area opportunities that will pivot the rapid growth of Africa’s aviation industry.

KATA Finance Director Dr. Joseph Kithitu said that several business interruptions brought about by Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 affected travel agents’ cashflows as they experienced massive cancellations and delayed airline refunds. He called on IATA to conduct a re-evaluation of the agents’ financial review on the basis of the temporary Local Finance Criteria (LFC) that is currently in operation for the Kenyan market.

“KATA travel agents contribute over 75% of the total passenger number bookings to Kenya Airways and other international airlines operating in Kenya. The closer the collaboration between IATA and KATA, the faster we shall rebuild the recovery of travel” he said.

Dr. Kithitu also impressed upon IATA to implement the Travel Agents Service Fee solution that will enable the travel agents to collect their service fees through IATA’s billing and settlement program efficiently. He noted that this will improve on the operational efficiencies of the Agent’s businesses.

Al-Awadhi, who was accompanied by Dr. Alex Stancu, Head of Region, South and East Africa and Dr. Getnet Taye, Regional Manager, Cargo and Ground Ops – AME thanked KATA for hosting the IATA delegation. He emphasized on the importance of close ties between KATA and IATA as an impetus to boost Kenya’s aviation and tourism industry.

Al-Awadhi said that the airline passenger traffic to, from and within Kenya fell by 52% in June 2021 vs June 2019. The picture was similar for the first half of 2021, with passenger volumes having declined by 54.2% as compared to the first half of 2019.

He called for a joint focus between airlines and travel agents to aid the recovery of the aviation industry. “If we work together, the next two years should see stronger recovery – even as the country ramps up vaccination and more countries reopen their borders,” he said.

Al-Awadhi expressed his profound passion to helping Africa’s Air transport and Aviation industry grow. He called on KATA to join IATA in strongly advocating for intra-Africa connectivity dubbed Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). He said that SAATM is intended to unlock travel within the continent and if fully implemented in the post-pandemic it will provide an even more important economic boost.

“Full implementation of SAATM across the continent would generate significant economic benefits for Kenya by creating about 39,000 new jobs and adding USD201 million to the country’s GDP,” he reiterated.

Al-Awadhi also spoke about the need for Kenya to realise that it is sitting on a gold mine full of opportunities! He urged Kenya to focus on a target of achieving 6.2 billion in tourism receipts compared to the current performance of 3.2 billion. He said, “Africa’s aviation performance has been challenging, and IATA is hoping to bring the transport ministers together in a forum to commit to the growth of the industry through strategic actions and interventions aimed at liberalizing the aviation industry”.

Al-Awadhi congratulated Kenya on going live on the New Generation of IATA settlement system (NGISS)! He said “Today, Thursday 23^rd Spetemebr, 2021 is a momentous day for Kenya with the Go live of the NewGen system! Kenya was amongst the last few countries in the IATA network to go live and this was limiting Kenya’s potential to grow and capitalize on the gains of the new technology solutions.”

The Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) and Amadeus East Africa announced Kenya’s Travel Recovery and Demand performance for 2021 in a webinar on “Outlook on Recovery” for the travel trade in Kenya. Amadeus search and agency booking data shows a very slight improvement in both outbound and inbound search demand and booking volumes for 2021 YTD vs. the same period in 2020.

Travel demand remains significantly below pre-COVID-19 levels owing to international travel restrictions in key markets in Europe, North America and Asia. However, in June 2021 there has been growth in searches and bookings to EAC countries with Tanzania leading as a leisure destination and also to the UAE. During the same period, there has been a growing demand for inbound travel into Kenya from USA, Germany and UK. Domestic travel searches remain high as people are looking to travel more within the country. However, overall travel demand to and from Kenya stands at -69.9% in June 2021 compared to same time in 2019.

The data presented indicated that COVID-19 related restrictions were a showstopper as 84% of respondents said they won’t travel if there is a chance of quarantine. According to the United Nations’ World Travel Organization (UNWTO), it is important for countries to start lifting travel restrictions to significantly improve traveller confidence.

Safe Travel Ecosystem: Preparing for Recovery

Speaking during the webinar, Jamel Chandoul Senior Vice President, MEA Amadeus noted that recovery will be driven by rebuilding traveller confidence and trust; trust for travellers that travel is safe and trust that governments can control the pandemic.

According to global data presented by Amadeus drawn from the “Rebuild Travel Digital Health Survey 2021” 92% of global travellers still have concerns about travelling – the top 3 travel concerns in 2021 are;

• 48% – Mixing with crowds at airports etc.
• 47% – Trust issues if accommodation is adhering to health and safety guidelines
• 46% – Safety & cleanliness of public transport

The survey findings indicated that CONFIDENCE to travel is high and the current appetite for travel stands at 41% globally. TRAVEL TECH has also been seen as a key confidence booster among travellers and if well deployed could be paramount to help restart global travel. 91% of travelers indicated that they were comfortable using a digital health passport for future travel.

INDUSTRY COLLABORATION is also key to reigniting global travel. 72%-74% of travelers said they were willing to store travel health data electronically, if it enables them pass through airports faster and travel to more destinations while 68% of travellers are willing to share health data if the airlines that they frequently fly with offer to store it.

“A renewed travel industry will require collaboration between governments, travel companies, entrepreneurs, and public authorities,” said Mr Chandoul.

What’s Trending in travel: Search Trends – Inbound & Outbound

Kenya Inbound Trends

A key trend noted in data by Amadeus is that 63% of international travellers searching for Kenya in June planned to travel within the next 3 months. This is an indication that travellers are planning and booking with shorter lead times.

The data presented shows a positive trajectory for travel during the course of 2021, with a gradual increase in searches. For instance, the average daily search activity of international travellers interested in Kenya in June was 10% higher than the year-to-date average. In July it was already 31% above the 2021 average.

Most searches for travel to Kenya in 2021 originated mainly from USA, 43% of total demand, followed by Germany 8%, UK 7% and Canada 4%. The USA also recorded the highest relative share of bookings at 30% followed by Germany at 8% and UAE and UK at 4% each.

Kenya Outbound Demand Evolution

Demand for Kenyans to travel to destinations outside Kenya has been increasing steadily in the past 2 months. The average daily search activity of Kenyans in June was 8% higher than the year-to-date average and in July it was 35% above the 2021 average.  The most searched destination by Kenyans in June 2021 was USA, 30% of total demand, Tanzania 5%, UAE 5%, and UK 4%, and the most booked destinations were UAE, with 15% of total bookings, USA 12%, Tanzania 7% and Ethiopia 6%.

UAE is leading due to fewer COVID-19 travel restrictions in place. In East Africa, Tanzania is the leading destination travelled to by Kenyans especially for leisure activities. This demand is driven by relaxed COVID-19 border restrictions for Kenyans visiting the country.

Evolution of Booking and Departure Lead Time for Kenya

We noted that the booking and departure lead time significantly reduced in 2021YTD compared to 2019. This is largely driven by the uncertainties with the destinations that Kenyans travel to. The constantly changing travel restrictions has affected early bookings and most Kenyans prefer to book close to their departure date.

• 72% of searches in June had a departure date in either June or July
• Booking lead time in 2019 – 26.4 days
• Booking lead time in 2021 – 16.9 days

Kenyan Seat Capacity Recovery: Percentage vs 2019 volumes, July – December

Kenya’s seat capacity among international airlines operating from Kenya has also been recovering gradually when compared to 2019 volumes, albeit slightly behind the global average;

• Seat Capacity recovery to international destinations – 51% (Global recovery is at 63%)
• Seat Capacity recovery to domestic destination – 86% (Global recovery is at 91%)
• Seat Capacity recovery to Middle East – 72%
• Seat Capacity recovery to North Africa – 83%

Notable Travel Trends for 2021

1. There has been a 20% increase on searches for 20+ day stays in multiple destinations searched by Kenyans. The need for longer vacations/stays by Kenyans to various destinations can be attributed to quarantine requirements of about 2 weeks in various destinations, and a general interest/need for longer vacations which can be seen as making up for restricted travel in 2020.
2. There has been an increase in relative share of Business and First-Class bookings from 9% in 2019 to 11% in 2021. This can be attributed to great discounts from airlines and an increased demand for indulgent travel.

The indulgent travel trend can be observed for all of the high-demand destinations for Kenyans:

• UAE – increased from 12.4% in 2019 to 20.9% in 2021YTD
• USA – increased from 11.1% in 2019 to 11.7% in 2021YTD
• UK – increased from 23.0% in 2019 to 27.4% in 2021YTD
• Tanzania – increased from 3.2% in 2019 to 4.0% in 2021YTD

Key insights for Travel Agents

Shorter lead times – The constantly changing landscape brought about by the pandemic has weakened consumer confidence and shortened the average booking to departure lead time. Travel Agents can leverage last-minute promotions to entice customers.

Emerging Destinations – With some markets enforcing travel bans and others opening themselves up to inbound tourism, we are witnessing a new order of top destinations. These change quickly as consumers react fast to travel announcements. By monitoring border openings, Travel Agents can prepare new offers and entice clients whilst demonstrating their knowledge of the evolving situation.

Extended stays in destination – There has been a global trend of longer average stays in destination. Kenyan travelers are no exception, with 2021 seeing a 20% increase in booked trips of 20 days or more. Travel Agents may want to consider increasing the number of longer stay trips in their offering.

Indulgent travel increases – Qualitative studies conducted by Amadeus indicate that travelers desire more indulgent and longer holidays now that travel once again becomes possible. In Kenya the relative share of booked seats in premium classes increased by 2% in 2021. This could mean there is increased potential to upsell clients to premium seats.

Industry Reaction

The webinar attracted attendance from different stakeholders within the travel industry including travel agents, government stakeholders, academic institutions and research institutions.

Speaking during the virtual session, Hon Joseph Boinnet, the Cabinet Administrative Secretary (CAS) in the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife expressed optimism in the resilience of the Travel and Tourism Industry to recover following some of the recovery measures put in place by government.

“The impact of COVID on the tourism and travel industry has been devastating. The data obtained from the Tourism Research Institute show that the industry made losses of upwards of 1.2 million full time jobs that translated to losses of KSh.192 billion in direct labour earnings, Ksh.492 billion on the entire tourism sector value chain while the industry players are estimated to have lost business value of up to Ksh.500 billion,” said Hon. Boinnet, terming this as catastrophic livelihood losses.

He lauded the government for taking proactive measures to ensure the sustainability of the industry such as ensuring that public and privately managed parks continue operating, promoting Kenya as an all-round destination for visitors and advocating for increased vaccination among the industry players. He said this while expressing his optimism in the industry’s recovery trajectory that is projected to fully recover by 2024.

Mr. Mohammed Wanyoike, KATA Chairman also expressed confidence on the industry making a full recovery sooner rather than later. “The industry is currently performing at about 40% of the 2019 numbers and this is an indication that the worst is behind us,” he said.

Mr. Mathieu Dutrisac, the Managing Director of Amadeus East Africa lauded the partnership that KATA and Amadeus have had for years that has seen the two provide the much-needed support to Kenya’s travel trade through the data insights.

Ms. Agnes Mucuha, KATA CEO urged the industry players to leverage the use of data in studying future trends. She said that use of data, embracing digital technological solutions and collaboration among the industry players will play a central role in ensuring a speedy recovery. “The pandemic has transformed the role of travel agents to travel advisors. Consumers will now be looking to you as a one stop shop for all their travel and informational needs relating to the everchanging travel industry,” she said.

Amadeus’ search and agency booking data is the source for all data quoted in this release. Please see the footnote for further details.

–ENDS—

About Amadeus search and agency booking data

^{As a key travel technology provider, Amadeus analyzes billions of global air travel transactions daily in near real time. Amadeus search and agency booking data is a suite of products that leverage the rich travel data generated across Amadeus to provide relevant and up-to-date travel trends and market information to the trade, destination tourism offices and tourism boards. The data includes in-depth information on Air Travel Demand – Flight Searches in OTAs globally, Travel Agency Bookings- Passengers booked via all GDSs, Seat Capacity- number of flights and seats scheduled and operated by airlines, Air Passenger Traffic- overall passenger volumes regardless of the booking channel.}