and move freely within Europe, the European Travel Commission said. International arrivals are forecast to remain at nearly half their 2019 level this year, though domestic demand will help make up the shortfall.
The U.K.’s statistics office suspended its monthly international passenger data, because it said there aren’t enough people arriving “to provide robust estimates.”
The United States this week upgraded its travel warning for Britain to the highest level. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised Americans to avoid traveling to the country because of the risk of contracting COVID-19 variants, while the U.S. State Department raised its alert level for the U.K. to “do not travel” from the previous less severe “reconsider travel” advisory.
Spain, the world’s second-most visited country, received 3.2 million tourists from January to May—a tenth of the amount in the same period of 2019. But visits surged in June with 2.3 million arrivals, the best monthly figure since the start of the pandemic, although still only 75 percent of the figure from two years ago.
Spain’s secretary of state for tourism, Fernando Valdés, credited the European Union’s deployment in June of its digital COVID-19 vaccine passport for having “a positive impact” on foreign arrivals. That, and the U.K. move to allow nonessential travel, “allowed us to start the 2021 summer season in the best conditions,” he said.
The EU app allows the bloc’s residents to show they’ve been vaccinated, tested negative, or recovered from the virus.
In Greece, where COVID-19 infections are also rising sharply, authorities have openly expressed concern that slowing vaccination rates could hurt the struggling tourism industry, a mainstay of the economy. Authorities have tightened restrictions for unvaccinated tourists and residents, banning their entry to all indoor dining and entertainment venues.
