We'd started out as 'have vax, will travel'  - but increasingly, the vax is required to travel.  I was interviewed by a top Canadian travel magazine this week. (I'll let you know when it appears in print.) And one of the questions was:

What's your stance on tour operators who are requiring travelers to be fully vaccinated in order to travel? Is this a positive thing among your clients?

And it was hard to limit everything I wanted to share on the topic. (The poor interviewer will have some fun trying to whittle down the word count.)

But here's the crux of my response.

I am fully supportive about requiring travelers to be fully vaccinated to travel, and generally, my clients are too (at least the ones who are travelling with me). That requirement to be vaccinated in order to travel is becoming increasingly common– whether it’s a tour operator, an airline, a rail company, a river cruise company - everyone is requiring these days.

Honestly, anyone who has travelled much previously already knew about vaccine requirements for yellow fever, and inoculations/ medicines for everything like malaria, etc. And we all have that little yellow card in our wallets for our vaccine records, and our our children’s vaccine records. Vaccine requirements are, or will be, required to travel.

We already see requirements in Canada. Newfoundland began to allow fully vaccinated Canadians to visit on July 1st. So as soon as my youngest daughter was 2 weeks after her 2nd dose, my family of 4 headed to Newfoundland. It was a little wild for me to finally get on a plane for the first time since February 2020, but it was so wonderful to be in the air again, and travelling to reunite with family is the best. And you already are aware that I shared the flight experience with you and my clients in photos and blogs and my weekly newsletter, including stories about the airport lines, the limited availability of restaurants at airports, the travel care packages Air Canada gave out as you boarded the flight, the health and safety protocols onboard, and the arrival procedures in Newfoundland (where uploaded vaccination records where verified before you could enter the terminal).

Newfoundland is not unique around the world for showing proof of vaccines. Vax passports are becoming more common to eat at restaurants, and to go to bars or sporting events. We’ve already seen it introduced in

• Quebec Sept.1st https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/progress-of-the-covid-19-vaccination/covid-19-vaccination-passport
• BC Sept.13 https://www2.gov.bc.ca/vaccinecard.html and
• Ontario on Sept.22nd https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-covid-19-cases-data-september-14-1.6174855.

And other provinces are going to follow.

We also have mandates in Canada for flights, trains, etc. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/canada-air-rail-transportation-vaccination-requirement/index.html- and we're seeing it in other countries, provinces/ states/ regions/ cities, etc too.

New York City -Vaccination Proof for Indoor Activities (Key to NYC) https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccines-keytonyc.page and LA County https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-16/new-la-indoor-covid-vaccine-proof-mandate-what-to-know have introduced vaccine passports or vaccine cards to eat out too. We’ve reached a tipping point here. There’s no going back on vaccinations to travel.