Recently, a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus was announced available and many airlines have been discussing transitioning back to regularly taking in passengers for travelling. However, there is a catch to it. A certificate of vaccination would most likely be required if travellers want to go on overseas trips as it was required by many countries to prove that one does not have contagious viruses/diseases like smallpox or yellow fever. To this day, many countries still require certain vaccination certificates (created by the World Health Organization in the mid-1930s) when travelling.

In order to make identifying vaccination certificates easier, a non-profit organization, The Commons Project, has been developing the CommonPass, an app that connects with websites for medical facilities which then can show verifications of vaccines and completed tests into the app while limiting the sharing of private information.

Many tourism resources like airlines to cruises and recreational vehicle rentals and hotels were affected tremendously because of the pandemic. As the pandemic slowly subsides and many think about travelling again, people are worried about the refund/cancellation policies as the situation is still unsteady and government traveling policies can be revised anytime. However, airlines and hotels are trying their best to make things favorable for customers by keeping flexible policies like refundable 24 hours out and within 48 hours of booking policies, even though they could lose potential profit.

The first key takeaway is that tourism resources like hotels and airline seats are perishable as they must be sold daily and cannot be stored for the next day and cause a loss in profit. In the article, "Cancellation policies in the vacation rental market has not changed," shows that companies have not revised cancellation policies to promise travellers a refund as they would lose out on potential profit if policies become more lenient. This helped me understand tourism resources and perishability.

The second key takeaway is that the tourism industry is making use of mobile technology to make travelling during the pandemic easier. In the article, it states that a company is working on an app "CommonPass" for travellers to have easy access to their medical records and vaccinations on their phones without having to carry around documents. This helped me understand mobile technology used in tourism.

The last key takeaway is that coronavirus is a barrier to travel which can affect tourists’ opinions about going overseas. The coronavirus caused many countries to close their borders and further in the future, vaccination certificates for coronavirus would be mandatory in order for people to be allowed into a country. These two factors can impact travellers’ decisions to go overseas as some might be willing to get vaccinated to travel while others might be reluctant to get a vaccination. This helped me understand the barriers of travel like virus outbreaks and travel restrictions that affect travellers’ decisions to travel.