In photo: From left, Chris Nelson BCCP Executive Director and Trustee and Verna Esmeralda C. Buensuceso OIC-Undersecretary, Department of Tourism. Taken from Hotel Outlook: The Road Back to Business
The British Chamber of Commerce Philippines (BCCP) is supporting shorter quarantine proposals for all passengers and more streamlined rules for international travel.
The British Chamber fully supports the Philippine Airlines (PAL) proposal of reducing the mandatory quarantine period to five days for vaccinated incoming travelers. Currently, PAL is proposing a new protocol that will reduce the risk and financial burden for arriving passengers, stressing the need to cut the quarantine period to five days and requiring testing 72-hours before the flight to reduce the carriage of infected passengers.
The original mandatory quarantine period of ten-days will only discourage travelers, particularly the balikbayans and Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) from making such plans due to costly travel expenses and having a shorter time they can spend with their families in the Philippines.
As the delivery of vaccines continues and more people get vaccinated, we would like to see more fast-tracked and straightforward measures done by the government in order to adapt to the challenges brought by the pandemic. Continued vaccine deliveries and inoculation signals confidence that we are on track to reopen our economy safely. It’s now time that we need to learn to adjust to the new normal and proper measures should be taken moving forward.
We believe we need to further incentivize the fully vaccinated and should be given more mobility. Alongside this initiative, minimum health-protocols must be ensured all the time.
Thus, we call on our national leaders and members of the Inter-Agency Task Force to favourably consider the proposal in order to support the recovery of our economy, particularly the most hard-hit sectors, specifically tourism, hospitality and transport. Approval of this proposal means we are allowing more people to travel, see loved ones and conduct business trips, while providing a boost for the industries mentioned above.
Furthermore, the Chamber also looks forward to seeing digitized vaccine certificates for all Filipinos that can be verified as authentic to grant more people to travel domestically and internationally.
Meanwhile in the UK, travel rules have been simplified to cut travel costs and boost the tourism industry, this includes scrapping the need for fully vaccinated passengers to take expensive COVID-19 tests on arrival from low-risk countries. The UK has also applied to join the EU Covid vaccine passport scheme, which should make trips abroad easier and cut airport waiting times as well as reduce testing bills.