Vaccines could make travel possible again in the near future. Here’s how tourism and the airline industry may adapt to new regulations.

Vaccines could make travel possible again in the near future. Here’s how tourism and the airline industry may adapt to new regulations.

With the new vaccine, many are hoping international travel and tourism will resume soon, but it's not clear when and how it will happen or what it means for climate change. 

Travel regulations like vaccination passports, digital travel passes, and touchless travel might be the new norm as vaccines begin to roll out. 

Most destinations will likely compete over tourism dollars when the borders reopen, so it's up to communities, governments, and the industry to drive behavior change and decarbonization.

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The COVID-19 pandemic brought the global tourism industry to a screeching halt in 2020. With vaccines starting to be rolled out, there is hope international travel can resume soon, but exactly when “” and how “” is the million-dollar question.

Before COVID-19, there was much concern about whether tourism had grown too big for our planet. There were calls to scale back tourism, make it more environmentally sustainable and help over-touristed locations become more resilient to crises.

However, with almost no international travel in 2020, we now have the opposite problem. The pandemic caused a 70% drop in international tourist arrivals globally from January to August, compared to the same period last year.

Destinations reliant on international