Beijing
With borders being temporarily closed worldwide and passenger flights mostly canceled to curb the spread of the coronavirus, tourism has been one of the worst affected sectors amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Restrict measures in many places have started to be lifted as preventive efforts paid off. Tourists are eager to get outdoors while governments begin to think how to bring them in while keeping COVID-19 out.
On Monday, in a conference call, foreign ministers from Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia agreed that, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Europe needs to go further.
They urged “the tourism industry and related private actors to take advantage of the coming weeks to take appropriate preventive measures so that they can protect travelers as soon as freedom of movement and travel is restored,” according to a joint declaration.
Following the conference, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Nicos Christodoulides said his country’s tourism sector will restart sooner in June than originally planned, given its epidemiological situation, and a detailed travel advice will be issued for each country.
Meanwhile, Greek authorities said on Tuesday that they will allow travel to and from all its islands.
Turkey has also started a detailed certification program for hotels, which “was the first in the world, and the EU also decided to initiate a similar one,” Ersoy said.—Xinhua
