Travel Industry Steps Up To Help Fight COVID-19 Pandemic

Nobody can accuse the travel industry of sitting out the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., has opened part of its park to serve as a COVID-19 vaccination site, just the latest move that shows the industry has been at the forefront of stepping up to help. The theme park joins such travel entities as airports serving as testing centers and hotels that have volunteered to house frontline health care workers who have been battling the pandemic for a year now.

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Andrew Do, chairman of Orange County’s board of supervisors, says 7,000 people a day can be inoculated at Disneyland.

“There’s no better place to have our first Super POD (Point Of Dispensing) site than right here at Disneyland, a travel destination for people around the world,” Do said according to the New York Times.

It’s no ‘one-off’ as far as the industry is concerned.

Last month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in Monterey, Calif., a popular tourist attraction, lent one of their ultracold freezers to a hospital in nearby Salinas for vaccine storage. More than a dozen U.S. airports now double as virus testing sites, including San Francisco International, Chicago O’Hare and Chicago Midway, Los Angeles International, Newark-Liberty International and more.

“How do we reopen safely? That’s been our goal all along,” Jay Burress, resident and chief executive of Visit Anaheim, told the Times. “To market our destination, either as a leisure destination or a convention destination when hotels aren’t even open for leisure travel, is spinning your wheels.”

Steven Pedigo, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert in urban economic development, said the business community – the travel industry included – needs to have a seat at the table.

“There are only a few entities that understand mass logistics. One is the military and the other is the private sector,” he said. “The business sector needs to have a seat at the table to talk about how we respond comprehensively, to ensure we are building a strategy around the pandemic that isn’t just prioritizing public health, but is also keeping the economy up and running.”