ITOA’s plea for vaccine passports
Below you’ll find a letter sent by the Incoming Tour Operators Association (ITOA) to government in January around vaccine passports and other measures to ensure international visitors can come to Ireland.
These passports, or certificates or whatever you prefer, have been touted as a lifeline for re-opening cross-border tourism in Europe this summer. The EU’s certificate system was agreed on this week by member states and the European Parliament.
Ruth Andrews, chief executive of the organisation, wrote to Taoiseach Micheál Martin in January to voice support for vaccine passports and rapid testing in order to reopen international tourism in Ireland. January was a pretty dark time in Ireland. The post-Christmas wave of infections was staggering with there being more than 7,000 daily cases at one point. This wave pushed back any timeline for re-opening by many months — a reopening we’ve only started to see in recent weeks.
January was also the time that the vaccine roll-out began in Europe. It got off to a sputtering start but has since gathered pace as summer looms.
Andrews told Martin that passports/certificates were a key element to helping international tourism back on its feet.
“It is critical that we take a proactive approach to this now, so that we are ready to implement an agreed solution and give further confidence to consumers to plan and return to international travel as soon as is practical and safe to do so,” Andrews wrote.
She also advocated for rapid testing:
