Sorry, with all due spect you are all quite literally grasping at straws. It will take a second to scan a QR code and see the result, the exact same as checking a ticket electronically. I recently returned from Germany where they have a passport scheme in place for pretty much every attraction or leisure activity indoors. I noticed they could check covid certificates in about 1 second, even my NHS on which didn't scan in their system was verified in about 2 seconds. I am not even particularly in favor of the scheme, but seeing this kind of hysterical reaction from people is really quite maddening.
Not all of the arguments above are grasping at straws, there certainly is technical and logistical challenges that will vary from venue to venue. Not least that sourcing requisite hardware could well be an issue for some because problems with chip supply is having all sorts of knock on effects. As an example we've been quoted July 2022 as the earliest supply for card terminals for a project!
The issue of defining nightclubs under Scots Licensing laws is clearly a problem if you are familiar with the way places either have an on-sale license or they don't, this provides one possible route of scope creep because it would be easier to say the rules apply to all businesses with an alcohol license. That without any additional scope creep would drag the ski areas into the vaccine passport system.
Last autumn considerable time, effort and money was spent at 3 of the Scottish ski areas preparing for level 4 operations, with new online ticket purchase systems put in place, and hardware for self collection of tickets once on site. These reduced interaction with staff, speed things up and eliminated ticket office queues - all good under the covid circumstances. Turned out all that effort was for 9 days of uplift operations under Level 4 Lockdown before things got tightened up to stay at home because of the Alpha variant!
If vaccine passports are now added to the mix, it will make that investment even more of a waste because the self collection of tickets wouldn't be permitted, every ticket collector would have have to have vaccine passports scanned for each ticket. This all on extremely marginal rural internet connections, and if the Scottish app works like the NHS Covid Pass in England then on a busy day that will be more network trauma and indeed 2 of the ski area bases where the ticket offices are located don't have a data signal at all until you are further up the mountain.
Having worked with ticketing systems and scannable tickets both in terms of access to ski areas and at events, both behind the scenes and on the sharp end dealing with the public, I could easily see the vaccine passport system tripling the time to process each patron, particularly where customers have to switch between ticket and Covid Pass and the scanner will need to be switched between apps. If your a football club or a theatre with a fixed start and you can usually get everyone in over 15-20 minutes, that's a problem and with the passports your still trying to get people in 30-45minutes later....
Scope creep of this is a concern for various sectors and it has to be asked can there really be sufficient benefit given Scotland is one of the most vaccinated countries on Earth for the costs and issues that are potentially going to be created?
