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Deloitte Access Economics has become the latest pundit to name 2024 as the year travel is likely to return fully – and the firm reached that conclusion before the latest slowdown hit Australia’s vaccine rollout, writes Peter Needham.

Australians hoping to travel overseas after October this year will not be encouraged by Deloitte’s latest quarterly business outlook, which says international travel for Australians is unlikely to return for three years.

Deloitte feels quarantine for arrivals may remain, in some form, for a number of years, potentially putting a major damper on travel.

Deloitte economist Chris Richardson told 7 News that international travel – both inbound and outbound – would likely remain “pretty weak in 2022, and it may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024”.

Deloitte’s quarterly forecast was prepared before Australia’s national vaccine rollout hit a big setback. Under 50s are now advised to wait for the Pfizer-BioNTec vaccine rather than have the AstraZeneca jab – from an abundance of caution over a very slight risk of blood-clotting complications. The risk is estimated at about 200,000 to one.

In consequence, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday the government would no longer be setting targets for delivery of the anti-Covid vaccines.

The trans-Tasman travel bubble (which won’t require vaccination) is very welcome and is set to start from next Monday, 19 April.

Australia’s vaccine rollout snag, however, has raised doubts about whether Qantas will be able to resume long-haul overseas flights in October, as planned. Qantas has made clear passengers on these will have to be fully vaccinated.

Millions of Americans and Britons are getting the jab, but in Australia the program is proceeding at a snail’s pace.

Ironically, it is the success of Australia and New Zealand in fighting the virus through quarantine and contact tracing that is helping promote vaccine hesitancy. Why should people who feel they are unlikely ever to catch Covid-19 be in any hurry to get vaccinated? In some overseas countries, people are queuing to get the jab, having seen friends, neighbours and sometimes close relatives sicken and die from the coronavirus. They are desperate for vaccination and they are not letting a 200,000-to-one chance of a blood clot stop them.

Without mass vaccination, Australia and New Zealand cannot open up fully to international travel. Earlier this year, Australia’s Department of Health Secretary, Dr Brendan Murphy, said he hoped international travel would resume from 2022, after vaccines were rolled out and administered in Australia and around the world.

That’s quite optimistic. 2024 has been repeatedly named as a likely year. Halfway through last year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) stated: “The return of global passenger traffic to pre-virus levels is now delayed by a year, to 2024.”

About the same time, RBC Capital Markets forecast Sydney Airport’s international travellers, a lucrative source of income, would not return to pre-Covid numbers until 2024.

Last week, Singapore’s Foreign Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, was asked at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Technology Governance Summit when he expected travel to return to pre-Covid levels. Balakrishnan replied that this would require interoperability and trust between jurisdictions, together with a sufficient level of herd immunity globally. He did not expect that to happen until about 2024, he told the Singapore Straits Times.

Qantas still plans to start international travel (beyond New Zealand) in October this year. It has scheduled flights and is selling tickets to the US, Britain and Japan, but it warned in February that initial capacity on international flights would be limited. Full overseas recovery isn’t expected until later. How much later? About 2024.

Written by Peter Needham