Spain will consider bilateral deals with countries including the UK in a bid to restart travel this summer, its tourism minister has said.
A deal would be sought if a standard for vaccine certificates was not agreed by the European Union, according to Bloomberg.
The newswire quotes Spain’s tourism secretary Fernando Valdes as saying that “maybe in summer we will be regaining British tourists in Spain”.
He said if an EU agreement could not be reached, “we will be thinking of other solutions like corridors, green corridors with third countries that can help us to restart tourism flows”.
Andrew Flintham, Tui UK managing director said the operator was already in talks.
“Tui Group is already in close coordination with Greece, Spain and Cyprus about travel this summer and we’ll be speaking to other holiday destinations in the Mediterranean shortly.
“We’ll continue to work closely with the EU and UK government to safely restart holidays this summer,” he said.
“We also know that not everyone can be vaccinated, so using rapid tests will be an important second step so people can look forward to enjoying safe, affordable holiday from this summer.”
Plans for a digital travel pass to kick start tourism by the end of June will be put to the European Commission on 17 March.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced proposals for the pass, which would carry vaccination and test data, on Monday.
It is unclear whether the UK, which is no longer an EU member, would be part of the scheme, which in any case is initially designed to open up free movement on the European continent.
Research by Skyscanner showed 83% of 2,000 respondents would be happy to carry a digital health passport in order to travel.
Among these, 24% said they would be happy to do so if it meant they could avoid quarantine and only 8% said they would not carry digital health information.