International tourism is at a standstill because of the pandemic, and until a solution can be found to help certify that travellers are COVID free and won’t be a risk to the country they’re flying to, the tourism industry will remain crippled. The Internation Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Travel Pass App may just be the app that helps jumpstart international travel again, and it’s currently being looked at by the Department of Tourism, with the latter planning to propose the use of the IATA Travel Pass app to the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) next week.
The IATA Travel Pass app in a nutshell allows international travellers to conduct typical arrival rituals such as take your photo and scan your passport, as well as upload testing and vaccination results supplied by an accredited medical provider from their country of origin. The app keeps this information confidential since no central repository holds the information.
The IATA Travel Pass App has recently been adapted for use for all arrivals in Singapore, and by Airlines such as Qatar Airways and Korean Air to name a few. It is IATA’s hope to ease travel restrictions and lessen quarantine periods for vaccinated passengers to spur international travel. The app itself aims to provide a global framework standard for travel and they are confident that governments around the world will adopt the system once the benefits of the app become clear.
At the moment, the Philippines has its own travel app called “Travel Philippines” that can be used to check on entry requirements of specific LGUs. Should the proposed implementation of the IATA be approved, the Travel Phillippines app can be linked to the IATA Pass.
Air Carriers Association of the Philippines’s (ACAP) executive director, Roberto C.O. Lim told BusinessWorld, the app can help restart international travel and that ACAP supports the IATA industry app as a standard application to simplify international travel requirements. Philippine Airlines Spokesperson Cielo C. Villaluna also adds “the use of the IATA Pass will most definitely help restore customer confidence in air travel.”
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