The many re-formulations of travel restrictions that have been imposed by governments on international travel these past two years have had a huge impact on the entire travel sector. We know that frequent changes to travel rules affect traveller confidence. If you can’t be sure of the travel requirements for a trip, think they might change, or are concerned about the cost of adhering to the rules imposed, then many would-be travellers will simply wait a bit longer before booking.
These changes have now been tracked as part of a wider project looking at the impact of restricting movement. The Blavatnik School of Government (University of Oxford) has created the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Called the Stringency Index, their index is a composite measure based on nine indicators of the types of response that governments have made to the pandemic. The indicators are not confined to air travel as they include school closures and work closures as well as travel bans,…