Beating the cough
The “new normal” of tourism is filled with health risks
Few people will have been surprised when the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control placed the south Aegean islands of Greece in its “dark red” category after an upsurge in COVID-19 infections.
Greece, whose economy heavily relies on the travel and tourism sector, decided a few months back to reopen its borders for some travellers arriving from the European Member States, without needing them to self-isolate upon arrival.
We’ve seen a similar back-and-forth in recommendations across Europe’s holiday destinations. There is a need to support economic recovery through tourism, as international tourist arrivals to Europe plunged by nearly 70% last year, according to U.N. World Tourism Organization figures. And for some, it seems to be working: visits to Spain surged in June with 2.3 million arrivals, the best monthly figure since the start of the pandemic, and about 75% of the figure in 2019.
At the same time, there is an equally strong regulatory need to curb the virus in its changing forms. Denmark recently made a snap decision to add the U.K. to its “red” list of countries. The U.K. announced that travelers coming from France would still have to self-isolate for up 10 days. There are entire websites dedicated to following the stroboscope of governmental responses.
Stuck in between these poles, tourism truly has become a game of traffic lights. Or perhaps more fittingly, a game of hot wheels: a race that has to be optimized through constant throttling and breaking in order not to fly off the track.
This “new normal” adds a spin to the familiar touristic credo of “beating the crowds”. The ultimate touristic pleasure is to experience a place just before others do (although, as I’ve argued, that ideal becomes confused when there’s actually no one around anymore).
For the tourist, the new game is one of checking guidelines and offsetting the risks of getting sick with the annoyances of quarantining. Places that are on your country’s green list will tend to get overwhelmed by other tourists, raising the chances of a COVID holiday — but banking on amber or red-list countries means to go somewhere that isn’t considered “safe” to begin with. That’s not including the impromptu introduction of new rules and regulations for visiting tourist sites, such as the COVID-19 pass in France and Italy.
This new set of safety requirements is also steadily transforming the already existing power imbalances between tourists and locals. During the last lockdown in Turkey, tourists had Istanbul for themselves, as only residents were obliged to stay indoors. Vaccination passports will no doubt become another differentiator for residents from first-world countries, while third-world citizens will have one more hurdle to overcome before they can step into an airplane.
But even the lucky few now face a new kind of uncomfortable unpredictability. And many of them might be asking themselves the question of whether the juice is still worth the squeeze. Why spend your precious holidays abroad when it is filled with forms, certifications, licenses, and the need to constantly check if you’re still safe?
Even the vaccinated and boostered few will be traveling through a world that does not have the same risk-free appeal it once had. The comfortable bubble of tourism, the dream that has been sold through flyers, pictures, and programs for a century, is tapering by the day.
