Is the Travel Bubble under COVID-19 a Feasible Idea or Not?

Abstract

The present study aimed to understand Taiwanese people’s willingness to participate in the travel bubble policy. A mixed research method was used to collect 560 questionnaires, and SPSS 22.0 software was used for the statistical validation and Pearson’s performance correlation analysis. Expert opinions were collected and the results were validated using multivariate analysis. Findings: People were aware of the seriousness of the virus and the preventive measures but were not afraid of the threat of infection. They looked forward to traveling to heighten their enthusiasm, relieve stress, and soothe their emotions. However, the infection and death rates have been high, there have been various routes of infection, and it has been difficult to identify the symptoms. The complex backgrounds of people coming in and out of airports, hotels and restaurants may create pressure on the participants of events. In addition, the flawed policies and high prices resulted in a loss of confidence in the policies and a wait-and-see attitude toward tourism activities. Thus, travel decisions (0.634), physical and mental health assessment (0.716), and environmental risk (−0.130) were significantly (p < 0.05) related to travel intentions, and different issues were affected to different degrees, while health beliefs had no significant effect (p > 0.05).

The Role of COVID-19 Vaccine Perception, Hope, and Fear on the Travel Bubble Program

“…Consequently, governments and businesses have investigated the implementation of travel bubbles as a potential strategy to restart international tourism [ 6 ]. Travel bubbles is a general term referring to an agreement between two or more destinations to allow travel between them without the need to quarantine [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. The program was open to all tourists who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 [ 8 , 11 , 12 ].…”

Travel Bubbles in Air Transportation: Myth or Reality?

“…First, one needs to carefully consider the fear of people and whether the sole re-installation of traffic will possibility lead to actually increased mobility [60]. Second, flawed or inconsistent travel policies can have deteriorating impact on peoples' willingness to travel [61].…”

Pandemic in the land of the smile: the case of COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand in 2020

“…The campaign was aimed at boosting the economy and reviving the tourism sector. In the next step, the government announced the ‘travel bubbles program’ which could be explained as a controlled opening of the country for tourists for certain countries under strict conditions like that in Taiwan ( Yu et al., 2021 ). Still, without a vaccine for COVID-19 how much recovery of global tourism including Thailand will happen remains to be seen.…”