Travel News: Is The World is more open than ever before?

FORGET BACK TO TRAVEL NORMAL — THE WORLD HAS NEVER BEEN AS OPEN AS IT IS NOW AS WORLD OPENNESS SCORE REACHES NEW HEIGHTS

The World Openness Score (WOS) has officially reached an all-time high of 54% global openness, moving past the dramatic two-year travel setback caused by plummeting visa scores during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arton Capital, the global leader empowering individuals and families to become global citizens, today unveils the latest World Openness Score revealing a dramatic shift to the re-opening of borders around the world, even beyond pre-pandemic levels.

The World Openness Score (WOS), is a feature of the acclaimed Passport Index and was developed to measure the impact of visa waivers and free movement of visitors around the world. Since its inception in 2015 this acclaimed tool has continuously measured and reported on the levels of visa-free travel globally, and how open countries are to one another. In August 2022, the WOS surpassed its previous historic high, set in December 2019, breaking the record at 21,362 with a 54% open world.

Marking an end to the pandemic’s tiresome blockade on global freedom, the WOS indicates a relative return to normality, and even growth in visa-free travel options. With the Marshall Islands finally lifting its COVID-19 travel bans on August 7th, the WOS reached new highs, hinting at the potential for further growth in visa-free travel on the horizon.

“The world is finally more mobile than ever, and times like these are yet another testament that the value of global mobility is undisputed,” commented Armand Arton, Founder and President of Arton Capital, and the creator of The Passport Index. “Movement of people, ideas, and services have defined the 21st century, driving innovations and uniting populations, and this new era of global mobility is another steppingstone to realizing the remarkable power and potential of an open world,” he continued.

As the first real-time interactive resource for individuals and government agencies on global mobility, The Passport Index has been monitoring and measuring the ease of travel between countries since 2014, directly reflecting the trends of freedom and openness through its proprietary data. Its World Openness Score tool had revealed the world steadily opened at an average pace of 6%, up to the pandemic.

However, between December 31st 2019, and May 31st 2020, when COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic; the WOS went from an all-time high of 21,360, to an all-time low, of 12,994 — dropping 65%. This meant that 67% of the world was closed for travel. Commensurately, the Passport Index Q1 Report of 2021 revealed global mobility in standstill, with an underwhelming 1.7% increase in four months.

The hope for recovery in reinstating open borders emerged in Q3 of 2021, when the WOS made encouraging strides, growing 19.7% to end the year with a score of 18,441 – roughly the same level as 2017. And by 2022, with the WOS climbing dramatically for the second year in a row, there was finally reason to believe that global mobility was well on its way to a full recovery.

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