OpinionCovid-19 cabin fever? For safety-minded Hong Kong, travel bubbles might still be months away

Name: When can we travel? Hong Kong companies aim to get Asia’s tourists safely moving amid pandemic
Uploaded: 2020-08-14T01:15:15.000Z
Duration: 3 min 7 s
Description: When can we travel? Hong Kong companies aim to get Asia’s tourists safely moving amid pandemic

Hong Kong was moving forward with travel bubble arrangements before the third wave of infection hit. Ironically, the cautiousness that has made Asia successful in the Covid-19 battle may keep the region from easily forming air bridges

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Staff at a deserted Hong Kong International Airport amid the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Nora Tam

Bernard Chan

Published: 9:15am, 14 Aug 2020Updated: 1:02pm, 20 Oct 2020

Hongkongers love to travel. In 2019, our 7.5 million residents took nearly 13 million outbound trips from Hong Kong International Airport. So it’s been tough dealing with the fact that we can no longer buy a last-minute ticket and jet off somewhere the way we could before the coronavirus became a fact of life.

As we enter our eighth month of Covid-19 restrictions, one of the questions I’m hearing is: “When will we be able to travel again?”

Everybody – businesses, governments, regular people – is eager to restart international tourism and commerce. Lately, a lot of excitement has been building around the idea of “travel bubbles” and whether Hong Kong could become part of one – or several – of them.

A travel bubble, or an air bridge, is an agreement between governments to ease (or even drop) Covid-19-related entry and quarantine restrictions. The idea is similar to that of a social or quarantine pod but on a larger scale, with countries, regions or cities, instead of family and friends.

On May 15, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania established a Baltic bridge, opening their borders to each other. In June, the European Union created a travel bubble among its member states. Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific islands have been talking about creating a trans-Tasman bubble.

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When can we travel? Hong Kong companies aim to get Asia’s tourists safely moving amid pandemic

What about Asia? Certainly, there’s a lot of interest in creating our own travel bubbles here. And you might imagine this would be a relatively easy process, since we are in a region that has been notably successful in managing the virus.