by Donald Wood
Last updated: 2:39 PM ET, Thu May 19, 2022
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) released a new report breaking down how to introduce a "Digital Travel Portal" designed to allow and maintain safe and stress-free travel.
The "Implementing a Digital Travel Portal" report calls for an alignment of coronavirus-related digital and paper requirements and the development of a global system to avoid further economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
WTTC's findings provide a blueprint for governments on how to implement a Digital Travel Portal not only during COVID, but also ahead of any future health crises that threaten economies and the global travel and tourism industries.
A universal travel portal would allow people to electronically share required documentation before the journey, reducing airport delays. The data collected by the program could also be combined with other standard security and visa requirements.
"Over the past two years, governments reached for their own solutions to halt the pandemic by restricting travel, but the result was chaos," WTTC President Julia Simpson said. "Chaos for the confused traveler and chaos for economies with the loss of 62 million jobs worldwide in 2020."
"If we ever face another pandemic, we must do a better job," Simpson continued. "People should be allowed to travel based on their individual health status by using a one-stop government digital platform before they start their journey."
The report builds on the previously released "Digital Solutions for Reviving International Travel" data released in December, which laid out eight recommendations and addressed the global challenge posed by ever-changing policies and processes.
The new WTTC report offers 12 recommendations as general best practice principles for the Digital Travel Portal, including data protection, language capabilities, privacy optimization, 24-7 communication and more.
Officials also provided five recommendations related to specific features and functionalities considered critical for an effective portal.
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