Available online at www.ijournalse.org Emerging Science Journal (ISSN: 2610-9182) Vol. 7, No. 5, October, 2023 Page | 1653 A Socio-Legal Study on Vaccine Tourism in the Context of Covid-19 Travel Restrictions Mohammad Owais Farooqui 1* , Shadi A. Alshdaifat 1 , Mohd Imran Siddiquei 2 1 Department of Public Law, College of Law, University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. 2 Department of Business Administration, University of the People, Pasadena, California, United States. Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the tourism industry harshly. The most effective way to steer clear of the virus is global vaccination. A novel concept of vaccine tourism arises from vaccine manufacturing corporations' limited stock and production capacity. The current paper aims to demystify the socio-legal and ethical underpinnings of vaccine tourism as well as analyze the restrictions on international travel imposed by major countries. The research critically examines key issues considering the literature's current arguments and integrates the current developments and challenges in the field of vaccine tourism. The paper addresses the fact that, in the current circumstances of travel restrictions, insufficiency of raw materials, ambiguous policies, vaccine passport authenticity, skewed distribution, and scarcity of vaccines around the world, the implementation of vaccine tourism is a big challenge. The study tries to understand the emerging concept of vaccine tourism and the major challenges to its growth. Vaccine tourism may be an instrument to revive the tourism sector post-COVID; therefore, understanding the current emerging issues around it would be significant for tourism literature. Keywords: Vaccine; COVID-19; Tourism; Law; Vaccination; Policies. Article History: Received: 01 September 2022 Revised: 21 August 2023 Accepted: 03 September 2023 Published: 01 October 2023 1- Introduction The COVID-19 outbreak has had a substantial influence on the global economy. The COVID-19 epidemic hindered international travel and wreaked havoc on the tourism industry. International arrivals have declined by 70% to 75% for the whole of 2020 [1]. The second wave of COVID has been rampant, with millions of new cases and the loss of loved ones [2]. Vaccination against the virus was one of the initial few steps undertaken by governments worldwide. Experts and medical personnel advised getting vaccinated at the earliest possible time [3]. To control the impact of the pandemic, mass immunization has been considered to play a key role. Vaccines are useful to prevent the infection and dissemination of bacteria or viruses [4]. Vaccination as a mechanism has been used by humankind in the past to reduce the loss of life from communicable diseases [5]. The effects of the pandemic have been studied to understand the shocks to the global economy [6]. The widespread availability of various vaccines has proved to be a crucial instrument in the fight against COVID-19. Eight such vaccines are manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford, and Sinopharm [7]. Vaccination has positively impacted global health, which in turn is beneficial to the travel industry as well. A study argued that travel is indispensable to modern human life [8]. The presence of high numbers of COVID-19 cases in the destination had the strongest negative and deterring effect on the booking intentions of domestic tourists [9]. In response, numerous nations have made COVID-19 immunization a prerequisite for international travel. * CONTACT: mfarooqui@sharjah.ac.ae DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-05-012 © 2023 by the authors. Licensee ESJ, Italy. This is an open access article under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).