The WYSE Travel Confederation community and COVID-19

WYSE Travel Confederation hosts global events for the youth travel industry. Click the logos below to learn more.

WYSE Travel Confederation stands by its commitment to encourage independent, responsible travel as a means for young people to pursue opportunities to discover and learn. We strongly believe that you should too.

Members of the only global community for international youth and student travel know that young travellers are usually the ones less deterred by adverse travel conditions like terrorism, health scares, and political unrest. Such characteristics of the youth traveller can be found in WYSE Travel Confederation’s specialised research publications on the youth travel marketplace.

WYSE Travel Confederation and its members also know that young travellers are often the first ones to return to destinations after such episodes. We are confident that this will again be the case with COVID-19 once there is a reduction in the number of new cases reported.

Young people are just as susceptible to fake and exaggerated news stories as anyone else and we believe it is important to act with accuracy and reason rather than sensationalism and scaremongering. This does not mean that we should ignore health and safety threats and sensible advice about how to reduce these risks, of course. In fact, it is promising to see evidence from our COVID-19 business impact survey that most travel and tourism businesses have already implemented a number of measures intended to minimise the spread of the COVID-19 virus and ensure the safety and wellbeing of travellers and workers while continuing operations.

We believe in the mission to encourage young people to travel and to facilitate educational travel opportunities especially tailored for them. WYSE Travel Confederation is aware of the challenges COVID-19 has brought to business across the industry and committed to the work of identifying trading opportunities for you at our annual conferences. With this in mind, we would like you to know that WYSE Travel Confederation will continue to:

• Promote the social and economic benefits of youth travel
• Lobby governments and destinations to take measured steps to promote travel and tourism within their regions
• Stage trading events to maintain opportunities for members and the youth travel industry at large
• Seek and disseminate accurate, current and balanced information on the youth travel marketplace so that members can make sensible decisions.

Please allow me to remind you with all due respect that the travel industry is no stranger to crisis and every crisis we have weathered has made us stronger. Coronavirus is a problem and we should all acknowledge that, but like many events we have all faced, we should also commit to rational consideration and reaction as the most sensible way forward. As we have seen in the past, once the panic subsides, travel will rebound.

WYSE Travel Confederation intends to continue its own events and be present at other’s events this year. We will see you there, won’t we?

David Chapman
Director General
WYSE Travel Confederation