This report is for government authorities and should be read alongside the WTTC Report on Digital Solutions for Reviving International Travel and is an extension of that report.

It provides additional advice and best practice guidance on implementing a Digital Travel Portal.

The Digital Solutions for Reviving International Travel report provided guidance for countries that would enable them to meet the commitments made by governments in 2021 at the WHO, ICAO, OECD, G7 and G20 for the safe and efficient COVID-19 health checks of travellers in a way that was globally interoperable and internationally scalable.

The report included eight recommendations that could be implemented by governments to enable them to grow their economies again by safely reconnecting their country with the world and provided the digital foundations for technologies that could be integrated with other Government services and healthcare systems to address both the COVID-19 pandemic and other future health risks at the border.

Central to addressing health risks at the border are recommendations two and three to activate a Government Digital Travel Portal and to establish digital connections between Government and Industry. This report therefore provides best practice advice and support for governments in implementing a connected Digital.

Travel Portal that can be used not only for COVID-19, but also for rapidly addressing future health risks to national economies and international travel and tourism.

A Digital Travel Portal is an online, or smartphone based system, that enables a country to publish their health entry requirements in a single location and for a traveller to digitally share their health status information with a destination government before their journey and receive an electronic notification pre-travel that they have met the health entry requirements. This provides governments with a robust border health security system and allows a person to travel internationally both safely and easily.

A Digital Travel Portal could be used with all modes of international travel and the UN agency responsible for air travel (the International Civil Aviation Organization [ICAO]) recently updated their guidance for governments in Chapter 10 of their Annex 9 Facilitation Standards and Recommended Practices (Amendments 29), to include the following two recommendations for governments for use of a digital portal, with a digital notification system.

ICAO Recommended Practice : Contracting States requesting standardized health documents and/or health-related documentation should consider developing a HEALTH DIGITAL PLATFORM where passengers can apply for obtaining a NOTIFCATION OF APPROVAL TO TRAVEL by the States of destination and transit

ICAO Recommended Practice : When Contracting States establish a HEALTH DIGITAL PLATFORM, aircraft operators should, where required, perform checks at the point of embarkation to ensure that each passenger has been granted APPROVAL FOR TRAVEL by the States of transit and destination

• ICAO Additional Note : In situations where States have interactive API the State could combine the portal with its interactive API response message (CUSRES) to the airline, providing an OK / NOT OK to board message

ICAO has also introduced a ‘Health Master List’ to enable government Digital Travel Portals to automatically and electronically authenticate the COVID-19 certificates submitted by travellers as genuine. WTTC therefore encourages all governments to follow the above two ICAO recommendations to establish a Digital Travel Portal with digital connections to industry and to both join and use the ICAO Health Master List to digitally authenticate traveller COVID-19 certificates. Further information on Digital Travel Portal integration with the ‘ICAO Health Master List’ is included later in this report. For governments to achieve maximum efficiencies a Digital Travel Portal could be integrated with an existing.

For governments to achieve maximum efficiencies a Digital Travel Portal could be integrated with an existing visa application system, but the functional requirements for general visa applications are outside the scope of this report, which focusses only on mitigating health risks at the border and best practice recommendations for the critical elements and general design principles of an effective Digital Travel Portal.

Read the full report here