Australia is saying bon voyage to its travel restrictions as international travel to the South Pacific paradise heats up. That annoying app – now gone. Proof of vaccination — also now gone.
If you’re considering a trip to catch up with Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide or any of the other wonders like Tasmania, here’s what you can expect on your next trip, and what the government says about forms in general.
Spoiler alert: they may not be gone forever, for reasons which may rapidly become clear. Among them, definitely don’t pay attention to the $50 million Australia paid for the defunct passenger declaration app, which lasted just a couple months.
Australia’s Travel Restriction Changes
As Of July 6th, air passengers are no longer required to be fully vaccinated to enter Australia. Furthermore, passengers are no longer required to download and complete the pre-arrival passenger locator and attestation form.
By virtually all accounts, the app was a tremendous failure in user experience terms, despite $50 million being spent to deploy the app just a few short months ago for the South Pacific nation’s grand reopening of international travel.
For now, it means visiting Australia is about as simple as the “before” times. Travelers can book flights regardless of vaccination status and can now just go back to worrying about securing proper visas, or visas on arrival.
Australia dropped all testing requirements in late April. Americans and others should be mindful that an ETA visa, similar to the US ESTA is still required before departure.
Restriction Free Travel Is Back, For Now
Australia was hoping that their expensive new app for processing arrivals would become a game changing feature. Unfortunately, Accenture, the developers of the app were the only winners, at least in the sense that they got paid.
Executive Traveller reports eager appetite from Australian officials to take a second bite at the apple, and hope to reboot the app as a centralized immigration system. In the future, ETA visas and other things could be linked via the app, potentially for faster processing.
For now, it’s all just good news for visiting Australia, with one less thing to download and tick off the list. It’s hard enough catching a plane right now!
As a pure blood, this is exactly what I want to hear.
I was in Australia in March 2020, right when Covid Mania kicked off.
What a dumpster fire the last 2 years there… poor citizens.
I wouldn’t go back with their restrictions, but now, happy days!
Excited to return
@don. Good. Don’t visit. Those restrictions you are so negative about saved many many peoples lives. Unlike the land of the free with over 1.1 million dead and still counting.
The DPD app wasn’t that bad. I completed mine the day before they announced it wasn’t needed and found it no better or worse than any other tracking app (well, better than Verifly which has never worked right for me). Just got to Sydney yesterday (Qantas still requires masks on international flights but not in the airport) and immigration was smooth and painless, just an old school paper form. They have an electronic entry kiosk very similar to Global Entry, but that was hit and miss (some folks were able to get a ticket, some weren’t). But all in all, a pretty easy entry process.