Top 4 Countries That Offers Covid-19 Vaccines For Travelers

At the start of 2021, when countries around the world began their vaccination campaigns, every world government was quick to ensure that they secured enough vaccines to immunize populations, at least the vulnerable. As more vaccines get approved and available, the number of people vaccinated will grow.

For the international travel industry, tourism has been a difficult year, and amongst people’s mindset, there has never been this trending term “Vaccine Tourism” before 2021. But this is trending and fast becoming a draw as many countries have started offering vaccines to tourists in order to lure more tourists back, bring life back to normalcy, and speed up the nation’s economic recovery. While few countries are offering vaccines for free, and others have included them in their vacation packages.

But what countries are offering this new perk of covid-19 vaccines along with an escape from the everyday work-from-home grind?

Maldives

The Maldives is a small archipelago country in South Asia, which remains a popular destination among wealthy tourists around the world and mostly from America and German countries. Don’t be surprised if you see tourists flock to the Maldives again during this pandemic-recovery era. The archipelago has resumed its 3V tourism – Visit, Vaccine, and Vacation, which is also offering covid-19 vaccines in a bid to revive its tourism sector.

Maldives Tourism Minister Abdulla Mausoom recently said Visit, Vaccinate, Vacation, will provide tourists with a convenient option to get their jabs and that the scheme will only go live once the native population has been vaccinated. He added that the main idea of open tourism is to provide fairly safe tourism with the least inconvenience. He also added, once the island nation gets vaccinated, they will move on to ‘3V’ tourism.

The Maldives authorities announced in the same month that more than 400,000 travelers had visited the island nation from the beginning of this year alone.

The United States of America

When the vaccination campaigns rolled out in the United States, some cities and states initially “received hostility” to offer covid-19 vaccinations for travelers. However, after a few months, the nation began to restore international tourism from this very first step to lure international travelers with vaccinations against covid-19.

New York City already offers vaccines to tourists at popular landmarks like Times Square and major airports. The US states, including Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, also offer free covid-19 vaccines to international travelers and local tourists to aid the summer tourism season. Since June 1st, travelers aged above 12 arriving at any of these states can get vaccinated with at least the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

Heidi Hedberg, director of public health at the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, stated, “Concerning their wants if any tourists traveling in or through Alaska would be able to get vaccinated.”

Russia

Russia may not evoke the same turquoise barefoot dreams similar to the Maldives. However, this place would positively make better conversation to demonstrate that you specifically traveled to get Sputnik V vaccination. The Russian authorities will be offering covid-19 vaccines for travelers, but it comes at a cost. As per the plan, travelers will be offered vaccine schemes lasting three weeks that cost around USD 1500 and USD 2500, excluding flight costs. Nevertheless, few tourists face challenges traveling to Russia as the Russian consulates still do not issue visas.

A couple of weeks ago, the President of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (RUTI) Andrei Ignatyev said to the Russian state news agency TASS that, “The product is available, but the foreigner’s legal entry and visa support issues hoping to receive the Russian vaccine are yet to be fixed.”

Indonesia

The resort island of Bali in Indonesia is not just keen to boost tourism but also began to offer vacation packages, including covid-19 vaccination. The initiative was declared by the Tourism and Cultural Economy Ministry of Indonesia that stated that vaccines would be available for both domestic and international travelers. According to the reports, this plan will give domestic travelers free access to China’s Sinovac and the UK’s AstraZeneca. Foreign travelers can get paid access to Sinopharm and other vaccines.