The ASEAN Tourism Association will press for a border reopening scheme among Asean's 10 member states at the 24th meeting of Asean Tourism Ministries on Thursday.
Mingkwan Metmowlee, president of the ASEAN Tourism Association (Aseanta), said the association, which includes the private sector and national tourism organizations (NTOs) of the 10 member states, will call for a resumption of tourism by the first or second quarter of this year as the industry is on the brink of collapse and needs urgent action.
"More than 70% of tourism jobs in this region will be lost if the borders remain closed, but once tourism picks up we will face another crisis -- a labour shortage," said Mrs Mingkwan.
Aseanta suggests every country prepare for border reopenings by drafting a regional framework for cross-border travel, standard operational procedures for the whole tourism ecosystem, and guidelines on testing and vaccination within the first quarter.
The association proposes that within the first half of the year, countries in Southeast Asia should start by considering business travellers from within the region, as well as China, Japan and South Korea, which are Asean's dialogue partners.
Mingkwan: Concern over employment
Mrs Mingkwan said although the business travel bubble arrangements in the past did not lead to a significant volume of air traffic, if Asean can enact more relaxed regulations it might be the first step in enabling a flow of foreign tourists.
"As there's a spike in infection rate in many countries, the region can consider city-to-city travel agreements in the initial stage," according to Mrs Mingkwan.
"People from green zones [areas with zero or low levels of infection] should be matched up, allowing them to travel with fewer days of quarantine required at their destinations," she said.
For leisure tourists, 10 countries should support the resumption of all types of travel by October. The facilitation needed for this stage includes digital health passports, which would contain the vaccination and Covid-19 records of each traveller.
A digital health passport system adopted by all member states would help to bypass mandatory quarantine and would enable people to travel more safely.
Mrs Mingkwan said the private sector in many countries, such as Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia, agree with the digital health passport proposal as some of them have already invested in digital contact tracing mechanisms, such as MyTrace in Malaysia and TraceTogether in Singapore.
