PETALING JAYA: As the Covid-19 vaccine continues to roll out, more countries are slowly opening up their borders to international travellers.
However, each country is in a different phase of the pandemic and has different vaccination rates.
As such, many major airlines including national carrier Malaysia Airlines Bhd are driving the push to introduce a digital health pass that will indicate personal health data, especially related to Covid-19.
Malaysia Airlines group chief marketing and customer experience officer Lau Yin May said the platform not only allowed travellers to store their Covid-19 test results and vaccine data, but also ensured minimal contact while travelling.
“When travelling, there are a lot of checkpoints that travellers have to go through from checking in to boarding and also going to the lounge.
“With the pandemic, our passengers’ preferences have changed quite drastically whereby people clearly prefer contactless or minimal contact as much as possible. As such, we have to prepare to make sure that we meet that preference,” she said at a webinar on The Implementation of International Covid Vaccine Passports last Friday.
The webinar was organised by Star Media Group Bhd in partnership with Malaysia Airlines.
It was supported by The Malaysian Association of Tour & Travel Agents (MATTA) and The Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) to discuss how the digital travel health pass was essential to revive the travel sector as well as new trends post-Covid-19.
The digital travel health pass is integrated with the Malaysia Airlines mobile app and will incorporate some modules of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
With the pass, passengers will have the convenience to make appointments with certified medical partners to carry out a Covid-19 test, as well as include their Covid-19 vaccination certificates on their mobile phones.
As each…