Testing, Vaccinations, Travel Insurance and Credit Cards: Your Year-End Travel Checklist

Packing your bags for a year-end getaway? Here’s what you need to know before you fly - including the credit cards that let you get the most out of your spending.

If 2021 was the year when COVID-weary Singaporeans started dipping their toes in the overseas waters once more, 2022 is the year they’re plunging straight in.

Gone are the Vaccinated Travel Lanes, complicated testing regimes and bureaucracy-filled tourist pass registrations. Instead, in the vast majority of cases, travel is as simple as it was before the pandemic - buy your air tickets, book your flights and go.

For those planning to join the multitudes seeking a year-end escape, here’s what you need to know.

What must I do before travelling?

The good news is that the travel landscape now is vastly different compared to one year ago. Virtually all major economies have dropped pre-departure and on-arrival testing, with vaccinations not even a requirement for some.

Mandatory pre-trip registration and travel insurance requirements have more or less disappeared, and you won’t even need to wear a mask on the plane to certain destinations. In other words, travel is almost back to the good old days!

Still, it’s a good idea to confirm the exact regulations for the country you plan to visit, since these can vary depending on your country of residence and vaccination status. Fortunately, there are tools out there that make this simple.

For example, Singapore Airlines’ Travel Advisory Portal shows you at a glance the relevant testing, visa, health insurance and quarantine requirements, based on your itinerary, nationality and vaccination status.

Source: SIA

Each section can be further expanded to see the relevant details, such as Japan’s pre-trip Fast-Track registration requirement.

Source: SIA

Another useful tool is Sherpa, which shows at a glance the countries open to you based on your nationality and vaccination status.

Source: Sherpa

Fully-vaccinated Singaporeans can currently visit 174 countries and territories with no testing or quarantine necessary, including:

• Australia
• Canada
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Japan
• Malaysia
• New Zealand
• South Korea
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Vietnam

As a side note: even though many countries have scrapped mandatory travel insurance requirements, it’s still a good idea to cover yourself before travelling. Medical bills aside, travel insurance will also help cover any disruptions to your trip, such as a pre-departure COVID diagnosis, lost or delayed luggage, missed flight connections and rental car damage.

Just this summer we saw travel chaos across Australia and Europe, as surging travel demand outstripped capacity. It remains to be seen if airports have been able to ramp up their staffing in the months that have followed, but one thing’s for sure - you don’t want to travel unprotected.

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What about returning to Singapore?

If you’re fully vaccinated, the only paperwork you need to do before returning to Singapore is to complete the SG Arrival Card. This can be submitted within three days before arrival in Singapore. If you forget, you can even do it on arrival in Singapore before you pass through immigration.

The SG Arrival Card takes no more than five minutes to complete and includes a mandatory health declaration. Submissions via the official portal are free of charge; beware of lookalike websites which levy a fee!

Unvaccinated travellers must take a pre-departure COVID-19 ART or PCR test within two calendar days of departure. Children aged 12 and below are exempt from this requirement. Unvaccinated travellers must also complete the SG Arrival Card, just like for fully vaccinated travellers.

Dust off the credit cards

For those heading overseas, a natural question is what card you should pack along for the ride.

The first decision you’ll need to make is whether to use a multi-currency debit card like Revolut or YouTrip, or a traditional credit card.

While there’s no doubt that Revolut and YouTrip will offer cheaper rates than credit cards, this comes at the expense of rewards.

For example, if you’re going to Japan you can either top-up your Japanese Yen (JPY) wallet on Revolut and spend the funds through your Revolut Card, or spend via your credit card.

Revolut allows you to lock in the current rates ahead of your trip. If you like the rate now, you can buy JPY and spend it further down the road, with no foreign currency transaction fees.

In contrast, a credit card will charge you based on the spot rates, together with a spread and foreign currency transaction fee. If the JPY/SGD rate becomes more unfavourable by the time you travel, you lose out by using a credit card (of course, the reverse is also true).

However, topping up your Revolut card does not earn any rewards. Therefore, the key question to ask is whether the credit card rewards more than justify the spread and foreign currency conversion fee involved.

So what kind of fees and rewards are you looking at? Here’s a breakdown by issuer and card network.