better travel photography•COM
our covid19 policy
photo tours with steve davey
Website, Images and text © Steve Davey/stevedavey.com 1990 - 2023
A bespoke range of photographic tours, designed and led by travel photographer Steve Davey. These tours draw on Steve's years of experience and intimate knowledge of some of the most fascinating and evocative parts of the planet.
More than a holiday, you will benefit from many picture taking opportunities as well as tailored photographic tuition & encouragement.
I am incredibly proud of our Covid Vaccine policy. This stated that any travellers on our tours had to be fully vaccinated. This was in part to protect other people on the trip, but also to protect people we would encounter in remote areas who would not have the same access to vaccines, or to medical assistance. This policy pre-dated (and maybe helped to inspire) a similar policay from Intrepid Travel, who provide all of the land arrangements for our trips.
We have run a number of trips with this rule in place, and I hope that we did our bit to keep the World safe, whilst it opened up for travel.
I have little doubt that the Covid vaccination programs around the World have helped to keep death rates down, whilst massively contributing to the current levels of immunity that are now helping life to get back to normal. However, current virus variants have milder symptoms than when Covid first emerged, whilst the vaccine offers much greater protection from serious symptoms, it appears to be less effective at preventing infection in the first place. I still maintain that it is a good thing to be vaccinated, but agree that the moral argument for making it compulsory is no longer there.
Intrepid Travel have recently announced that they are dropping their requirements for all travellers to be vaccinated against Covid from the beginning of 2023 and so we have decided to drop our own similar rule.
It is worth pointing out though, that the dropping of vaccination requirements for travellers on our trips you will still have to conform to any local rules and restrictions that countries, or indeed airlines might require now, or in the future. This may, or may no include quarantines or testing regimes for unvaccinated travellers.
As with visa requirements, whilst we will provide access to information on the current situation, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that you are aware of, and conform to any local regulations, when booking a trip in the future.
It is also worth bearing in mind that if national governments bring in restrictions for unvaccinated travellers,whether this involve testing, or even quarantines, then this will not be taken as grounds to cancel the trip as a whole, which means that prevailling cancellation conditions will apply.
This may well mean that any travellers won't be eligable for a refund if they are prevented from travelling because they have not followed the overwhelming medical advice to be fully vaccinated against Covid.
All travellers are also still strongly advised to make sure that you have travel insurance with adequate cover for Covid, in case you have to cancel a trip at the last minute due to Covid related concerns.
Our Covid vaccination policy was intended to minimise the risk of us taking Covid19 into remote communities.
