The only realistic path forward for tourism is a shared health credential.
En la primavera de 2021, mientras Europa avanzaba hacia un pasaporte sanitario digital para reactivar el turismo, el Consejo Mundial de Viajes y Turismo buscaba trasladar esa visión a América Latina, una región sin el andamiaje institucional del bloque europeo pero con la misma urgencia económica. Lo que estaba en juego no era solo la movilidad de los viajeros, sino la capacidad de los gobiernos para construir confianza mutua a través de datos compartidos y verificables. El pasaporte de salud se perfilaba como un instrumento técnico con una pregunta profundamente política en su centro: ¿pueden los Estados garantizar la veracidad de lo que certifican?
- El turismo internacional permanece paralizado en la región mientras Europa ya diseña su hoja de ruta digital para reabrir fronteras en verano.
- América Latina carece de una institución supranacional equivalente a la Unión Europea, lo que convierte cualquier estandarización regional en un laberinto de negociaciones bilaterales.
- La WTTC presiona a ministros de turismo, incluida la peruana Claudia Cornejo, para que adopten un documento de salud que reconozca tanto la vacunación como la recuperación del virus.
- El mayor obstáculo no es tecnológico sino institucional: los países deben digitalizar registros de vacunación, coordinar con autoridades migratorias y garantizar que los datos sean confiables.
- Acuerdos bilaterales o trilaterales emergen como solución pragmática ante la ausencia de un marco continental, aunque representan una respuesta fragmentada a un problema que exige coherencia.
En abril de 2021, mientras Europa avanzaba en el diseño de su pasaporte COVID-19 digital, el Consejo Mundial de Viajes y Turismo ya sostenía conversaciones con Perú y otros gobiernos latinoamericanos para explorar algo similar. Maribel Rodríguez, vicepresidenta del WTTC, se reunía con la ministra de turismo Claudia Cornejo y funcionarios de la región, convencida de que un documento de salud estandarizado era el único camino realista para reactivar el turismo internacional.
Rodríguez insistía en llamarlo pasaporte de salud, no de vacunación. La distinción era deliberada: un documento que solo reconociera vacunados excluiría a quienes se habían recuperado del virus sin inmunizarse. El modelo europeo —un registro digital portátil con fechas de vacunación, resultados de pruebas y estado de recuperación— le parecía replicable, siempre que hubiera voluntad política. Trazó un paralelo con los estándares de seguridad aeroportuaria adoptados tras el 11 de septiembre: el mundo había acordado reglas comunes y avanzado. América Latina necesitaba ese mismo impulso.
El problema estructural era evidente: la región no contaba con una institución equivalente a la Unión Europea. Rodríguez proponía acuerdos bilaterales o trilaterales como alternativa viable, aunque menos elegante que un estándar continental.
Erick Anticona, profesor de negocios internacionales en la Universidad del Pacífico, compartía la lógica sanitaria del instrumento pero dudaba de su implementación rápida. El verdadero desafío, señalaba, era la legitimidad de los datos. Un pasaporte de salud solo tiene valor si la información que contiene es verificable: registros de vacunación digitalizados, resultados de pruebas con fechas precisas, constancias de recuperación. Eso exigía coordinación entre ministerios de salud, autoridades migratorias y oficinas estadísticas, además de transparencia suficiente para que otros países confiaran en lo que se les presentaba. Sin esa infraestructura institucional, el escepticismo no desaparecería por decreto.
In April 2021, as Europe moved to launch its COVID-19 health passport—a digital document meant to certify vaccination or recovery status and restart summer travel—the World Travel and Tourism Council was already in conversation with Peru and other Latin American governments about building something similar for the region. Maribel Rodríguez, the WTTC's vice president, had been meeting with Peru's tourism minister Claudia Cornejo and officials across the continent, exploring whether a standardized health credential could unlock international travel again.
The European model was straightforward enough. The passport would not replace a traveler's actual passport but would serve as a portable digital record—vaccination dates, recovery status, test results—that would move with a person from country to country. Rodríguez saw it as the only realistic path forward for tourism. She was careful about the language: she called it a health passport, not a vaccination passport, because she believed the distinction mattered. A health document could account for people who had recovered from the virus without being vaccinated; a vaccination-only credential would exclude them.
The WTTC's role was to facilitate, to push governments toward coordination, and to learn from Europe's experience. Rodríguez drew a parallel to airport security after September 11th—a moment when the world had agreed on uniform standards and moved forward together. She believed Latin America needed the same kind of alignment now. In her conversations with regional ministers, she found them aware of the problem and willing to move. The private sector was pushing for it too, just as it had in Europe. What was needed was political will and coordination.
But Latin America faced a structural problem that Europe did not. The European Union provided a framework for bloc-level agreement; Latin America had no equivalent institution. Rodríguez suggested bilateral or trilateral deals as a workaround—pairs or small groups of countries agreeing to recognize each other's health documents. It was less elegant than a continental standard, but it could work.
Erick Anticona, a professor of international business at the Universidad del Pacífico, was more cautious. He acknowledged the health logic of the passport but doubted it could be implemented quickly in the region. The real problem, he said, was legitimacy. A health passport was only useful if the information inside it was trustworthy. And that raised a question: what exactly would go into it?
Anticona laid out what would be needed. Each country was already issuing vaccination cards—paper documents with the vaccine name, manufacturer, and expiration date. Those records would need to be digitized and made available nationally, accessible to migration authorities and other relevant agencies. The passport would also need to track test results, showing when someone had been tested and what the result was. And if someone had recovered from COVID-19, the document would need to record when they had the disease and when they were cleared of it. Only with that level of detail could one government credibly assure another that a traveler was safe to enter.
The challenge, Anticona argued, was not technical but institutional. Governments would have to guarantee the accuracy of the health data they were sharing. They would have to coordinate across agencies—health ministries, migration authorities, statistical offices. And they would have to do it in a way that was transparent enough that other countries would trust it. If they could manage that, the skepticism around health passports would gradually fade. But it required real commitment, real infrastructure, and real honesty about what the data meant.
Citações Notáveis
The private sector and public sector must work together, and we should try to replicate Europe's experience.— Maribel Rodríguez, WTTC vice president
As the state can guarantee to another state that one of its citizens can visit them with real health information, the concept of illegitimacy will gradually dissolve.— Erick Anticona, professor of international business, Universidad del Pacífico
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did the WTTC think a health passport was necessary at all? Couldn't travel just resume once people were vaccinated?
Because vaccination rates were uneven across countries and regions, and some people had natural immunity from recovery. A health passport was a way to say: we have a common language for who is safe to travel, regardless of how they got there.
But you mentioned Rodríguez was careful not to call it a vaccination passport. Why did that distinction matter so much?
Because calling it a vaccination passport would have excluded recovered people and created a two-tier system. She wanted the document to be inclusive—to recognize multiple forms of immunity—so it wouldn't look like punishment for the unvaccinated.
The Europe model worked because the EU existed. What was the actual barrier in Latin America?
There was no continental institution to broker a deal. So instead of one agreement covering everyone, you'd need dozens of bilateral agreements between pairs of countries. It's messier, slower, but it's what the region had to work with.
Anticona seemed worried about fake or unreliable data. Was that a real risk?
Absolutely. If one country's health records were sloppy or falsified, it would undermine trust in the whole system. Every government would have to be willing to stake its credibility on the accuracy of what it was certifying.
So the real work wasn't designing the passport. It was building the infrastructure to make the data trustworthy.
Exactly. The technology was the easy part. The hard part was getting health ministries, migration authorities, and statistical offices in different countries to talk to each other and agree on what the numbers meant.