COVID vaccination passports inevitable

Trying to ensure travellers in Australia are vaccinated against COVID-19 will hinder the sector in the short term, but is inevitable in the long term,  a tourism expert says.

The Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania wants its state government to consider a requirement that visitors to the state be fully vaccinated. Curtin University tourism expert Dr Mingming Cheng said it was a likely path for all governments.

Vaccine passports ‘not a single solution’

The Tasmanian Government is not enthusiastic about calls from the Tourism Industry Council to require visitors to the state are vaccinated. “The people who really matter about getting vaccinated are the people inside Tasmania,” Tasmanian Director of Public Health Dr Mark Veitch said.

“Vaccine passports are an interesting concept, but they’re not a simple or single solution at all.” Dr Veitch said while a vaccinated person has a lower risk of serious illness or death, they can still transmit COVID.

Some states more reliant on interstate travel than others

He said the situation in places like Western Australia — which currently requires travellers from NSW to have had at least one jab — was different because the majority of travellers in WA had traditionally been intrastate as opposed to interstate, or international. 

About 91 per cent of travellers in WA before COVID were from within the state, and this had grown to 98 per cent since the pandemic began. Only 2 per cent of travellers to Western Australia were from other states, shrinking from 5 per cent before COVID. While international tourists were a smaller percentage, they spent a lot more than Australians, Dr Cheng said.