 Hello, everyone, and thank you for attending today's session. My name is Jackie Gifford, and I am the Editor-in-Chief of Travel Leisure, joining you here from New York City. Travel and tourism continue to face enormous logistical and economic headwinds, with some 40% of jobs vanishing here in the United States alone. What policies, practices, and partnerships are needed to reopen borders and enable essential travel, tourism, and commerce in a safe and sustainable way. Today, we are here to discuss how to restore cross-border mobility and reinvigorate the economy with four key stakeholders. So joining me for a panel discussion are Paul Meyer, the CEO of the Commons Project Foundation, Joanna Garrity, the President and Chief Operating Officer of JetBlue, Patty Hajou, the Minister of Health for Canada, and Luis Felipe de Oliveira, the Director General of Airports Council International. Before we get to our panelists, though, I'm going to just do a few little notes for housekeeping. The Prime Minister of Aruba, Evelyn Weber-Cruz, will be joining us for introductory remarks. We're then going to hand it back over to the panelists for a discussion. At the half-hour mark, we're going to be moving to a closed-door session and Q&A with the forum members. I'm asking you to please stay logged on. You don't need to log out to join the session, and you can ask questions from the chat function. You can raise your hand. We're all really excited to talk to you. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to the Prime Minister for her remarks. Thank you, Jacqueline, for your kind introduction and to the World Economic Forum to bring attention on restoring the cross-border travel, especially now. Aruba is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. We are known as one happy island, and we are a major tourist destination in the Caribbean. We embrace the developments in secure digitization of the travel process, and we are at the forefront of seamless and contactless passenger facilitation ever since the launching of the Aruba Happy Flow in 2015. Part of our economic and innovation recovery plan is to continue to create a safe, a healthy, and a trusted environment for our visitors and our citizens. Aruba is actively rethinking and innovating in areas such as e-government, cybersecurity, and digital identity to name a few. And this is a part of our larger recovery and with a renewed focus on greater economic resilience. The Common Trust Network is a groundbreaking initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Commons Project Foundation, and this fits in Aruba's innovative approach towards bouncing forward. The Common Pass is a secure choice for our travelers, allowing for rapid, accessible, verified, and trusted sharing of digital health data of the COVID-19 test results. Increasing the passengers' feeling of safety by minimizing contact and ease of use and facilitating the flow of arrival upon destination by adhering to interoperable standards as well as data privacy rules and regulations, and finally, ensuring trust and transparency to our travelers. For Aruba specifically, we continue welcoming travelers that can provide proof of a negative test taken 72 hours prior to departure, and alternatively, upon arrival, passengers are able to conduct a PCR rapid test with results provided within 24 hours. In our government's continuing efforts to provide the most safe, seamless, and coordinated travel experience possible, all necessary facilities and procedures are in place for any visitor needing to take a COVID-19 test while in Aruba as a requirement for reentry to their country of origin. Aruba is pleased to be the first country to join this initiative to soon pilot the Common Pass as a choice for passengers on the jet-blue flights to Aruba. These digital developments are happening at an accelerated pace. By harnessing the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we envision a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive Aruba. Empowering our citizens, cultivating a culture of innovation, expanding on our e-government capabilities, engaging business and civil society towards increased public value creation. Aruba is ready to further innovate to be a partner as we are open for happiness. Thank you. Thank you, Prime Minister. I really appreciate you joining us today. So I'm going to turn it over to our panelists, Paul. Hi, how are you? I want to just talk a little bit about Aruba joining the Commons Project Foundation and this major first step. Why is it so important? We're delighted for the collaboration that we've developed with the government of Aruba and with jet-blue as well. What's exciting about Aruba coming on board is the validation of this basic idea, which in order to reopen safely, governments like Aruba need confidence that people coming to their country have been tested and soon have been vaccinated. It's very hard to have the confidence to begin to reopen and allow travel and commerce to resume if you're doubting that a person who says they got tested actually got tested. So the whole idea behind the Common Trust Network is to create an open interoperable network of trusted data sources, credible labs, credible vaccination sites who are either doing the testing or doing administering vaccines that can provide people with a digital credential of that test or vaccination record that they can then carry with them and show when they get on a plane or arrive in a country like Aruba that they actually did get the test or did get the vaccine that they're expecting. And so Aruba's leadership is critical because it does segment the world that with the confidence in those data, in those sorts of health credentials, that's the first step to being able to begin to reopen safely. System of apps out there, what is really needed to achieve harmonization? Well, let's break it down. First is health data interoperability standards, right? What I call a PCR test or a Moderna vaccination needs to be the same as needs to be described in the same way that another entity might. So the first is around harmonizing of health data standards and the common trust network is building on those existing health data interoperability standards. So that's the first element. The second element is how are those data securely wrapped? It's easy with people are just showing up with pieces of paper or with handwritten vaccine certificates to fake those. So the second element is actually securing that data. So it isn't changed. So when someone gets on a plane or enter a hospital, when someone gets on a plane or enters a country, you can say, this is the same person that actually got that test or got that vaccination. And the third element is actually creating a registry of those trusted data sources. Just having a standard health record using standard formats that's wrapped securely doesn't really matter if you don't know where it came from. So having a registry, knowing what those sources of data are really important to be able to instill confidence in those destinations that they actually can rely on the information to make critically important decisions. Do you address privacy concerns among users if people are concerned about sharing these medical tests and records? By putting the person in control of their information. We don't believe that someone should have to hand over their health information to an airline or government or anyone else. What they can do and this is what Common Pass, which is built on top of the Common Trust Network does is inspects the individual's information that stays securely in their control and just sends a signal to either an airline or to a government that this traveler has satisfied the requirements of the destination. The health data never leaves that individual's control. That's how we're able to protect individual data privacy but yet give countries, airlines, other travel partners the confidence that the travelers actually have met their requirements. Thank you, Paul. That's great. That's actually a great segue to Joanna. I want to just, you know, talk to you about the fact that you will be trialing the Common Pass on flights to Riverwood JetBlue. Why do you think this is an important first step in restarting travel? Thanks, Jackie. And it's great to see the Prime Minister of Riverwood, but we're such a great partner and thanks for all of your support over the last several months as we navigate this crisis. You know, we're looking at how do we make travel safe, healthy, and easy? And I think the patchwork of laws that are coming out and requirements that are coming out that don't pay much regard to some of the privacy considerations but also the accuracy and validity of some of the testing requirements are a concern. And so as we think about the Commons Project and Common Pass specifically, we believe that can take many of those considerations sort of off the table for an airline or for a government because that's the expertise that they have, you know, obviously being founded in sort of a broader health records platform. And so our view is we'd like to plug into the Commons, into Common Pass to help provide that level of security for testing data and eventually vaccine data. I mean, testing data is interesting because it comes from labs and labs are uploaded, but vaccines aren't going to necessarily come from labs. Vaccines are going to come from a variety of healthcare providers. So there needs to be some thought assuming that vaccines provide the level of protection we think they will. There needs to be a level of thought around a verifiable vaccine framework as well. And then you want to make it easy for the customer. You want the customer to understand what the rules are in that specific country. You know, we have a saying, you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport. We would love to have a cohesive set of rules around the world, but frankly, I think that's probably unrealistic, at least in the short term. And so having both an engine that explains exactly what the customer needs when they go to that destination and then facilitates that document storage is going to be critical for customer ease of travel. And then ideally for our crew members, you know, we all talk about trying to ensure distancing in airports. Well, when you start introducing, you know, paper attestations and records where it communicates your COVID status in paper form that undermines the whole notion of this seamless touch-free airport experience. And so we're also very much focused on how do we protect the health and safety of our own crew members so that they don't have to go through a series of documents that frankly may not even be accurate, but more importantly put them in a situation where they're much closer to customers than perhaps at least the CDC guidelines would recommend. I just flew internationally. Full confession, I and I found the paper, the showing of the COVID testing quite cumbersome and I can't wait for the day that this is all digitized because it will make for a more seamless travel experience. Joanna, can you talk to me a little bit about the CDC requirement for international travelers having to be tested? What impact that is actually having on your business? And I guess this is a two-part question. If you could give the audience a little bit of a sense of what domestic travel is going to be looking like this year and any potential testing requirements, you know, that's been in the news lately as well. Sure, thanks. So the CDC order went to effect on Tuesday. The order provides that for anybody over the age of two, you must produce a negative COVID test and negative molecular test taken within 72 hours or three calendar days. Actually it says three calendar days of travel prior to departure. And then you also have to produce an attestation. So a paper attestation where you agree that you haven't been exposed to COVID and aren't positive. That has to be presented at the time of departure. This went into effect on Tuesday. I might say the first day was a bit bumpy. Certain countries like Aruba were extremely prepared for this and had, I think, sufficient testing capabilities. Other countries were less prepared. We do expect over the coming week or so that testing capabilities will scale more quickly. I said in our earnings call before, necessity is the mother of invention. You will have a variety of testing opportunities, whether it's at a hotel, whether it's at the airport, that will scale in the coming weeks. I do think, as Paul properly pointed out though, the validity of that test and how do you protect against fraud is going to be an important consideration as we move forward. So I do think there's a process in place in international to already check documentation. So from that perspective, it adds more time to the process, but there is already that framework. As we start thinking about domestic, there are a number of reports out that indicate the CDC is considering putting into place testing across the United States domestically interstate. I think this is a new administration. The government is obviously stepping into a world that they're just learning about how good or bad it may be in terms of how prepared we are for vaccination and testing. They're trying to balance public health considerations, economic recovery. I think we have some real concerns with the domestic testing requirement. I think first and foremost is, frankly, the ability to actually scale testing around the United States. In certain states, testing is working much better than in other states. There are concerns around the turnaround time. In many cases, if you take a PCR test, it takes several days to get that back. And we all know that the test is only good for that snapshot in time. U.S. travel noted that if you start requiring travelers domestically to get tested, that will be 42 percent more customers per day. And we're real concerned about how that's going to put stress and pressure on an already fragile infrastructure. And then I think, given the United States and most of it is contiguous, how do you single out air travel, which has already been determined to be a safe mode of travel? How do you single out air travel compared to other modes of transportation? And does this really accomplish from a risk perspective what I think the CDC thinks it may accomplish? People are still going to find a way to see mom and dad, whether it's taking a plane, a train, a bus. And then finally, again, there's not a structure in place in our airports to check documentation. We've been very much focused on biometrics, on touchless experience, waving your boarding pass through a gate that is not necessarily staffed. And you start introducing paper documentation and testing. That creates, I think, link longer times to board, creates longer times to check. And then frankly, again, puts our people in a difficult spot where not only are they trying to enforce mask wearing and social distancing, but now they're asked to enforce testing and then presumably eventually vaccination. So it's something that we're really encouraging CDC to partner with the industry to understand the operational realities of some of these considerations so that we can come up with the right risk-based approach for domestic travel. Thank you. Thank you, Joanna. I'm going to come back to you in a little bit, but I want to turn things over to the minister. Minister Hajji, thank you for joining us from Canada. So if you could walk people through sort of the current protocols that are in place in Canada right now, people have to, they are required to submit a negative COVID test to enter the country, but there's also a 14-day quarantine requirement. So what are sort of the operational impacts of this policy? And there are also pilot programs that you're actually testing in certain provinces right now. So I'd love for you to walk the audience through that. Well, thank you very much. And I'm finding this conversation fascinating, I have to say. And it's been, as a minister of health, one of the most challenging aspects of my role is to try and manage from the very beginning what to do with international travel. And we all know that the international health regulations were kind of thrown out the window in this regard very early on as countries worked to try and prevent the importation of COVID-19 and did so in varying degrees. I'll just back up and say, yes, we do have a very rigorous process. I would say one of the more rigorous in the world, the 14-day quarantine is really the only sort of fool-proof way to determine whether or not someone actually does have COVID. And we know that the pre-departure testing is a point in time. It is a valuable additional measure to do some screening before someone gets on an airplane. We do have testing at the border in a number of provinces. Voluntary at the moment, which in Alberta at the moment it's around trying to see what the blend of testing and quarantine might be that provides a certain level of comfort around reducing that risk of importation. And there's varying perspectives around the country about whether or not we need to loosen our measures. And then in some provinces and territories, obviously calls for strengthening of measures. In particular, as we start to see some Canadians continue to travel south, for example, for vacation. I will note that international travel is down by 90%. So huge amount of decline in terms of international travel. I guess for Canada, it's around trying to make sure that we control our own domestic epidemic, which we have had a significant second wave. But I'll also say, I think when we're talking about international travel, that confidence, I think, by travelers that when they resume travel, they're going to be able to travel with a reduced or even a no risk sort of scenario of contracting COVID-19 is going to be critical to reestablishing the industry and international travel. And so the points that I sort of wanted to raise in this part of the question is really the need for collaboration. You're hearing a lot in terms of digital tools and what that looks like. I would also say we need to collaborate more as a globe to actually combat the epidemic. Because in fact, some of the areas where I think Canadians most frequently travel or want to travel or for leisure or for other reasons, often there's uncertainty about their own personal safety if they do so. And so this need for a more cohesive approach to understanding how we combat this epidemic as a globe I think is critical to the industry. I would also say that the political reality is significant. I mean, governments are under enormous pressure to protect their citizens. The rise of variants, as you know, has created another sort of flurry of conversations around the role of borders, how borders are or aren't effective at preventing viruses from entering countries. And that's adding additional political pressure to governments around the world to take measures to protect against importation. And I would also say that the important piece that I think as we're talking about sort of fast passes and touchless systems and various different kinds of digital tools, I would also say that the issue of equity is something that we need to kind of keep our mind on, right? Because so much of the travel in Canada is actually about family reunification. It's about people moving around for work and we've got a large sort of group of folks that move for reasons that are not recreational. And so I think we have to sort of stay focused on the equity issue and the systems that we design have to be designed through the lens that people from all around the world are going to be able to access this in one way or another. And that's where I think the partnership with industry can play a really important role. I think that's equity is hugely important and I thank you so much for raising that point. With the Alberta pilot program, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the quarantine requirements can be shrunk down to seven days, correct? If people are test negative and then they can go about and resume their businesses. How has that pilot program been going? So it was actually at the conclusion of a first negative PCR test that they could leave quarantine and then begin to move about ideally staying within the province of Alberta, although there is no internal mechanisms to stop people if they are going to travel to an adjacent province. It's going okay. I mean, we're still seeing importation rates that I would say it's concerning to, in particular the provincial authorities, but also to our own ministry and the Ministry of Health. It's not a perfect solution. And I think someone, you said maybe Paul, that the test is really just a point in time and that's the limitation, right? With PCR tests and even the rapid test is that you are essentially assessing whether a person is infectious at that point in time. And we know that this virus has a long incubation period for some folks and that some folks don't test positive until day 10 of exposure. So it's been a really tricky piece. And I think that's where also industry collaboration, I'm not necessarily travel industry, but potentially to accelerate the development of tools that can be used in screening capacities would be super helpful. I mean, I think that's one of the areas where quite frankly, we have a sparsity of tools. We've got good diagnostic tools, not such great screening tools. And screening tools that are fast, that are accurate, that can help, and that are, I would say, economic would be really, really helpful I think in terms of country's response and I would say ideally industry's response as well. Thank you. Thank you, Minister. I'm going to hand things over to Felipe. Thank you for being so patient. I want, if you wouldn't mind walking the audience through your role with Airports Council International and really what do you think the single greatest challenge is to restarting travel and tourism and making people feel comfortable in airports flying? Well, first of all, thank you very much, Jacqueline, for the question and thank you, my colleagues here on this panel. It's very interesting to hear from you what is your expectations about the future of the industry and the use of the health passes as well. It's amazing because one year ago when I was doing one of my last trips, business trips, we are discussing about the COVID in Asia, a lockdown in Wuhan and basically thinking about another issue that will affect only a part of the world. After that, the role turns global and we are discussing that in September, October of last year we have the start of recovery of the industry. After that, that didn't happen we end up at the end of the year saying that the Christmas and New Year will be the recovery of the industry because of the time that you are ready to lock it down and everything that's happened and the second wave comes and everything was closed again and all the good expectations that we have at the end of the year with the vaccines development comes a little bit down. We as an ACI world, we need to work together and advocate in name of our airports in the name of the industry as well because we believe that at airports we have our partners that is the big partners at airlines but we have all the tourist community as well that is linked with us. That's why cruise hotels, business, etc. that are linked with aviation. Aviation is a global business and you cannot really stop to fly nowadays in a global perspective. Here in ACI we are based in Montreal and Montreal is very well known but the capital of the world of aviation because we have ICAO here the International Civil Aviation Organization we have IATA the International Air Transport Organization as well and I think we are willing to collaborate and work together with ICAO in terms of global standards and global perspectives for the industry. I'm very happy to see the Minister of Health said that we are working for collaboration and in working that I think that's the best thing to do if we here, based here in Canada can help with the process we'll be very happy to do that and the cooperation in global standards the cooperation to have a kind of global harmonization of the process will help us to get out of this crisis and vaccines, tests and interviews as a tool there is no way that you have a zero risk but there is a way that you can work together and have this industry going back on track millions of jobs are at risk the economy down turn as well is at risk and aviation play a key role on this process. What do you see 2021 looking like in terms of recovery? I know it's so hard this is a moving target and everyday changes but what are your goals for this year? Well the industry went down last year in the airports around we are losing around 12 billion dollars in terms of the losses for the industry we lost around 65% of the global passengers and of course we expected to recover especially in international traffic only on 2024 2025. We are seeing some good developments in domestic markets we are seeing China India, Brazil, Russia in the domestic markets growing a little bit that's why we are seeing some recovery on these areas but it's very difficult to see a recovery from international passengers that is still reaching around minus 92% on international connectivity and this year will be a very tough I think the things will get worse before getting better unfortunately but we expect that we have from the June, July at least a light of the end of the tunnel with the development of vaccines we developed procedures that can be used tests to reduce the quarantines and of course bring the public and the states the good faith on the industry that we are doing the right thing to recover the process considering of course the technological situation of the countries