Tourism industry across the world is closely interconnected. The fact that certain countries are streets ahead of others in vaccination rates is creating new inequalities and preventing across-the-board global tourism from Covid-19 recovery.
Vaccination against the virus is currently crucial for world tour in 2021 and certainly still will be in the year 2022. The global travel community is reasonably unanimous on this, although there are, of course, still many differences in the design of travel regulations.
Besides, more and more countries are opening their borders to those vaccinated and recovered (or even tested). But in countries where the general population does not have access to vaccination, new waves of covid are feared - especially those with new variants. If vaccination rates remain this low in many countries, it is more likely that new variants will develop - including 'variants of concern' such as the delta variant - which may prolong the pandemic and pose a threat to health systems around the world.
The tourism industry is extremely important especially in many second-and third-world countries, but its recovery is slowed down because of a vaccine disparity that is preventable in itself. This, in turn, can have negative effects on the travel industry worldwide, including in the "first world countries". In short, if vaccine equality is not guaranteed, global tourism recovery is threatened because there will continue to be uncertainty about what might come - which in turn affects the confidence of the end consumers.