MADRID: Spain hopes the introduction of vaccination passports combined with pre-travel COVID-19 testing will allow British travelers to return to Spanish destinations this summer, a tourism ministry source informed Reuters on Tuesday.
“We support the vaccination certificate however not as the only way to recuperate mobility, rather, as one of the means inside a portfolio of measures together with social distancing, pre-travel tests, mask-wearing,” the source stated.
The government has no plans to introduce quarantines on abroad visitors, and was also counting on a wider agreement to be hammered out between Europe and Britain to remove restrictions on non-essential travel, the official added.
Over 2020, as world travel was dramatically curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, international tourism to Spain – one of the world’s most visited nations – fell 80 percent to just 19 million guests, a level not seen since 1969.
The industry’s contribution to gross domestic product tumbled to between 4 percent and 5 percent, according to estimates from Funcas think-tank analyst Maria Jesus Fernandez, from a 12 per cent share in 2019.
