DUBAI: Dubai Airports' chief executive on Wednesday urged wealthy nations to better help poorer states in accessing COVID-19 vaccines, saying global travel was unlikely to reach previous heights without most people being vaccinated.
The global travel industry has been plunged into its worst ever crisis by the pandemic, which continues to keep many planes grounded or flying near-empty with demand struggling to recover.
"If you're serious about wanting to go back to the degree of mobility we had before, then I am afraid the protection of the majority is going to be the agenda that prevails," Paul Griffiths told the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.
Griffiths said he did not like the idea of countries restricting entry to the vaccinated and called for a more equitable vaccine distribution.
"A lot of the richer countries have really got to help the poorer countries get the degree of access to vaccines that the West has had so far," he said.
Dubai International Airport, operated by Dubai Airports, saw traffic plunge in 2020 to 25.9 million passengers from 86.4 million in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic struck. The airport is a major international hub connecting passengers between developed and developing countries.
Griffiths, who has run state-owned Dubai Airports since 2007, said the public did not need to have privacy concerns about vaccine passports, mobile apps that store health data.
Vaccines passports would be like mobile wallets, which process payments without notifying the merchant how much money the user had in their bank, he said.
Similarly, the vaccine passports would simply be able to inform airlines and airports whether a passenger was safe to travel based on the information stored without disclosing it.
Griffiths said he believed global travel would recover to 2019 levels by 2024, in line with industry forecasts.
He also said Dubai International's capacity had before the pandemic been improved to be increased to 120 million passengers a year by 2030, up from around 95 million-100 million today.