ATC Blog Galapagos Islands DMC Ecuador

Good news! Ecuador and Galapagos will reopen soon

It has been a tough time for all of us in tourism, and we truly hope from the bottom of our hearts that you, your loved ones, and your businesses are coping as best as possible with the situation.

Leaving all the negatives of the last months aside, we are happy to inform you that our local authorities announced their plans to reopen the Galapagos once again for tourism as of July 1st, 2020. This step has been taken after Santa Cruz and San Cristobal in the Galapagos were officially declared to be clear of COVID-19 cases last week.

Little by little, most local businesses are adapting to the new normality and implementing controls and protocols to restart activities, and with that we expect to restart operations as soon as we receive a green light from our local authorities. KLM (one of the main airlines connecting Europe with Ecuador) has also informed about potentially resuming flights as of July, and we remain positive that other airlines and major travel providers will follow.
Ecuador currently reports a total of 39,098 confirmed COVID-19 cases, and over 50,000 discarded potential cases. The country has developed a ‘stoplight system’ from red to green for each province. Quito will be moving to yellow light as of this week, which means certain restrictions will be lifted starting from today. This process still involves abiding by all the recommended self-distancing protocols. In the following weeks we will update you with relevant information about FAQs for Ecuador & the Galapagos. Furthermore, we are going to send our internal protocols that shall be followed when tourism returns to Ecuador.

Finally, we are glad to let you know that we are doing alright

Although we had to make hard decisions internally, we can proudly say that we have been able to keep most of our staff with us, which has been and will remain a priority for our business. We keep working mainly from home, but as of this week, started to go to the office on two days to ‘breath a different air’, making decisions to move forward, adapting to the new reality in ‘good old Darwin fashion’; and as always, we keep our spark of innovation working in our softwares and new ideas for tours and experiences to share with you! We are certain that there is a chance to do better once all this is over. Making the right decisions to achieve this goal is something that we are doing now – for we want to be able to run at full power soon again!
Stay safe, stay positive and remember that we will get through this together!
Sending you positive energy,