Australia reopened its borders to tourists after two years due to the pandemic

Australia reopened its international borders on Monday to all foreigners vaccinated against covid-19, marking the return of international tourism since it closed its borders at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Since the arrival, this morning of the first of almost 60 international flights scheduled for the day, tears and hugs between family and friends were mixed with music and stuffed koalas and kangaroos, as well as typical treats that were given to foreign visitors. at airports.

“We haven’t seen each other in over two and a half years. We are very excited,” Sydney Anderson told the Australian public broadcaster SBS at the Sydney airport, referring to her daughter, who lives in the United States and suffered four rejections of her visa application to enter Australia.

The reopening of international borders for foreigners with two doses of the covid-19 vaccine who meet certain travel requirements will allow them to enter almost the entire country without the need for quarantine, except for the region of Western Australia, which will lift the restrictions on March 3.

Unvaccinated foreigners without a valid medical exemption must apply for special permission to enter Australia and undergo quarantine in this country, which has applied some of the strictest border closures and confinements in the world.

TOURISM RECOVERY

The entry of all visa holders who are vaccinated – the latest step in the progressive reopening of international borders that began last November – represents the reactivation of the tourism sector, which is Australia’s fourth-largest export activity.

“The thousands of international tourists arriving this week and many more in the coming months will help revive the tourism sector, which has been struggling for the past two years,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said in a statement.

Qantas, which will open new routes in March, reported that it already has 14,000 international ticket reservations for this week, while the Australian Minister of Tourism, Dan Tehan, expects the sector to have “a strong rebound”, he said today channel 7 on local television from Sydney airport.

The tourism sector, which employs some 660,000 people, contributed -according to official data- some 60.8 billion Australian dollars (43.62 billion dollars or 38.51 billion euros) before the pandemic pushed the Canberra Executive to close its borders.

This measure translated into a drop in the twelve months prior to March 2021 compared to the previous period, of 99.3% in the number of international travellers, to 60,212: as well as a decrease in spending by foreign visitors of 98 .1%, up to 794 million dollars (572 million dollars or 503 million euros).

STAGED RECOVERY

Facing the recovery of the sector, Tourism Australia has allocated 40 million Australian dollars (about 28.8 million dollars or 25.4 million euros) in a campaign to attract foreign visitors in this new stage in which the borders will not be closed and the population will not be confined.

But the executive director of the Victoria Region Tourism Industry council, Felicia Mariani, told the public broadcaster ABC that it could take “two to three years to get back to the kind of international visits and spending that we had before the crisis. pandemic”.

Australia, which has overcome three waves of covid-19 that mainly affected Sydney and Melbourne, was hit hard by the omicron variant when it began to reopen its border last November and went from less than 2,000 daily in December to an average of more than 100,000 in the middle of the year. from January.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, this country of 25 million inhabitants has accumulated more than 3 million infections and almost 5,000 deaths, although it already has 95 percent of its target population vaccinated with two doses of serum against covid and accelerates the inoculation of the third.