Would the last person to leave the British travel industry please turn out the lights.
This latest green list holiday havoc is a brutal kick in the cojones for the hundreds of thousands of decent people who work for the likes of tour operators, travel agencies and at airports, airlines, hotels and much more.
Consumer confidence is everything in travel. It's already desperately fragile, and this is an utterly disastrous move which could shatter it.
It's not just a nail in the coffin of the beleaguered British travel trade - it's a dagger to the already bleeding heart. Many jobs may go. Businesses may shut.
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There were high hopes this week among the public and industry that there would actually be MORE destinations added to the updated green list.
We've been through months of winter lockdown misery and the vaccine rollout is going brilliantly. Surely, SURELY, we thought, the Government would be throwing us a bone with an island or two in the sun getting on the green list?
Malta? A Greek one? Perhaps one of the Balearics or Canaries? Anything would have been welcome news for the travelling public and the industry.
Instead we got zero, zip, zilch, nada...NOTHING.
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And then the Government drip fed us the even worse bombshell news that Portugal moves to amber on Tuesday. You could practically hear an anguished groan of disbelief across the nation – from the homes of millions to the shellshocked boardrooms of the travel industry.
It was the one major European sunshine destination we could easily and safely go to. What happened to the green watch list between green and amber? Why isn't Portugal on that before going amber to give people fair warning? It's only been 18 DAYS since we got back there!
What's that loud bang? Oh, it's the sound of the door slamming shut on the summer holiday plans of tens of thousands of bewildered Brits, who suddenly have their getaway dreams in tatters with Portuguese amber meaning a home quarantine which many people cannot do.
Plus, of course, we have been told by the Prime Minister that amber is for essential travel only and holidays are not essential.
In these ongoing difficult times, that is broadly true. Much as we all want and need a break, unfortunately it's not a given right and we must recognise the risk of importing the Covid variants out there.
It's been 16 months of coronavirus travel chaos and, at this rate, we seem to be heading for a second shambolic main summer season.
Supposedly we were not returning to 2020's crazy Thursday 5pm 'Shapps o'clock' holiday hokey cokeys on Twitter, when Brits were forced to cough up for expensive flights to scramble back home before a Saturday 4am quarantine.
Yet here we are AGAIN with the race (albeit now a middle distance four-day one, rather than the two-day sprints of 2020) now on to get back from the Algarve, Madeira, Lisbon, Porto, the Douro Valley and the Azores. Then there's the refunds and rebookings those due to travel now have to deal with. What a mess.
We need a coherent, consistent plan for restarting leisure travel, not more of this frustrating, expensive on-off confusion which also royally shafts the Portuguese travel industry who welcomed us back just 18 days ago with open arms – and did all the right things with virus measures.
Britain's travel trade is drowning, not waving. It pours tens of billions of pounds into UK plc each year and employs hundreds of thousands of people, but it's on the brink and the Government must take immediate and robust action to support it right now, so it's still around to take us to our favourite destinations as soon as they get the green light – and hopefully soon.
Yes, we can still go to Gibraltar, but its hotel capacity is very limited. Israel has clearly been worryingly turbulent recently, and Iceland is amazing but not exactly a sunlounger, cocktail and Kindle destination.
So where do we go?
No offence to the good folk of the still green-listed South Sandwich Islands, and much as I like an Antarctic Fur Seal, it's not exactly on the nation's sunshine getaway radar.
Looks like it's play safe with staycations and seacations for the moment. The prospects for meaningful overseas travel currently look as miserable as a lost flip-flop washed up on a Med beach.
