Editor Note: Understanding the importance of this timely topic and to ensure that research is made available to the wider academic community, IGI Global has made a sample of related articles and chapters complimentary to access. View the end of this article to freely access this critical research.
According to a recent CNN article, individuals are starting to pre-plan travel once again; airline, Airbnb, and hotel reservations are soaring for the 2021 summer. Although, many countries are still urging their citizens not to travel due to the pandemic, the hospitality and travel industry are supporting this boom in an effort to rebound from the nearly 50% decrease in the industry. Due to this recent increase, governments are questioning what effects this tourism boom will have on the spread of COVID-19 and many officials are lobbying for the use of “vaccine passports.”
These “passports,” also called health certificates, are currently under development by the International Air Transport Association, IBM, and several other private-sector companies. They will track if travelers have received the COVID-19 vaccine or have been tested negative for the virus. With countries, including Israel and Denmark, adopting similar measures for concerts and public events, many are questioning the effectiveness of these digital health passports and how many countries will actually adopt them for international travel. Additionally, concerns have arisen regarding health data security, availability of these passports socioeconomically, and governmental interference, which is hindering the wide adoption of this initiative.
Understanding the importance of this topic and the need for increased research to assist in rebounding the tourism industry, Prof. Shalin Hai-Jew (Kansas State University, USA) discusses the latest research on this topic in her chapter, “Societal Shutdown and Reopening and Reclosing in the U.S. as Expressed in Social Imagery Narratives” from Handbook of Research on Using Global Collective Intelligence and Creativity to Solve Wicked Problems (IGI Global).
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The spillover of a pathogenic virus from an animal species into humanity is always a cause for concern, given various health effects from such common viral spillovers. One of the features of such viruses that is of special concern is human-to-human transmissibility, and in particular, through aerosolized droplets and airborne transmission, given how social humanity is and how congested and high-density the world is with its nearly 8 billion people. Such a feature of high transmissibility of a virus enables the propagation of infection to a global population (distributed around the world) and could lead to mass infections, diseases, and death, in a global pandemic. If humanity is tinder for novel viral spread, according to one popular epidemiological model, humans can be in only a few states: susceptible (without defenses, without prior experience of the virus), infected (and infectious or contagious, able to shed the virus and pass on the infection to others), and recovered (no longer infectious to others, likely with some resistance against reinfection by the same virus) and / or removed from the population (dead). At some point, a population will achieve “herd immunity” if enough people have been infected, but arriving at that state entails a high cost in disease and death. [More recent research suggests that people may be re-infected with SARS-CoV-2, given the mutations of the virus, which puts into question the ability to achieve a state of “herd immunity” based on natural immunity. The “protection” is limited by the strain of the virus and is seen to diminish over time. This research also suggests the need for effective and potentially more frequent vaccinations for human health, assuming such a vaccination is possible (Howard, Aug. 24, 2020).] Optimally, a population can achieve some herd immunity if they can design various vaccines for immunity (to trigger the person’s immune response against actual infection by the target virus), without the dreadful cost in human suffering and death. Another approach is to achieve various therapeutic interventions that may protect people against death and against permanent health harm to various body systems and organs.
The endeavors to “flatten the curve” refers to the societal efforts to slow the spread of a virus in the population (given points of exponential spread), so that healthcare systems are not overwhelmed and so scientific researchers can find ways to effectively combat the pathogen. If left unchecked, the virus will burn through the world’s population, with rising infections leading to uncontrolled exponential spread (with the doubling of the infected rising exponentially in ever-shortening time periods). [The world added a million cases in four days in late July 2020 (Haworth, July 26, 2020).]
Complimentary Research Articles and Chapters on
Hospitality & Tourism | In response to the timeliness and importance of this topic, we have made the below articles and chapters available with complimentary access. As such, please feel free to integrate these resources into your research and
share them across your network: | | | | | |  | Chapter 10: “Smart Tourism Planning”
Profs. Katarzyna Leśniewska-Napierała (University of Lodz, Poland) et al. |
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