A couple who went on a dream honeymoon to Mexico – despite Covid cancelling their wedding – were forced to cut it short after the country was added to the travel red list.
The rule change means anyone arriving from there into the UK after 4am today will be hit with expensive hotel quarantine costs.
Martin Macdonald and his wife-to-be Caroline Macintyre, from Fort William, had to delay their wedding due to coronavirus but decided to still go ahead with their dream trip to Cancun.
But three days into their holiday they had to fork out an extra £2600 to board one of British Airways’ last few flights home yesterday before the cut-off point.
Caroline, 45, who works as a carer, said she was relaxing by the pool when she found out.
She added: “I felt sick. It is heartbreaking. I went straight in to get BA to change our flights. I’ve never been to Mexico and I was so looking forward to it.
“There’s no common sense in how they decide this.
“It’s normally Monday it changes but they even did that early. No one has this kind of money to spend extra.”
Martin, 39, who works for Network Rail, said: “I started shaking when I found out.
“We’ve paid for an all-inclusive hotel which we’re not going to be in and £2600 more for flights. We’re just gutted.”
Mexico was added to the list along with Georgia and the French islands of La Reunion and Mayotte in the latest round of “traffic light” changes announced by UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
The surprise decision was made due to fears about the rise of the new B.1.621 Covid variant in the country, which was first discovered in Colombia.
An estimated 6000 British holidaymakers abandoned Mexican beaches to scramble for flights home ahead of it joining the UK high risk red list today.
The cost for solo travellers staying at a Government-approved quarantine hotel for 10 days will go up from next Thursday from £1750 to £2285 while the charge for an additional adult sharing a room will increase from £650 to £1430.
The price for children aged five to 12 stays unchanged at £325.
Shapps said all countries added to the red list “present a high public health risk to the UK from known variants of concern, known high-risk variants under investigation, or as a result of very high in-country or territory prevalence of Covid-19.”
The Transport Secretary added that the UK Government was “committed to opening up international travel safely, taking advantage of the gains we’ve made through our successful vaccination programme”.
He went on: “While we must continue to be cautious, today’s changes reopen a range of different holiday destinations across the globe, which is good news for both the sector and travelling public.”
Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania and Norway are among seven countries being added to the quarantine-free green list. The latest review sees the controversial amber plus list scrapped which had previously forced fully vaccinated travellers from France to quarantine due to concerns over the Beta variant.
However, France has now been moved back to the original amber list, allowing people who have had both doses of the vaccine to avoid isolating and taking the eighth day test.
The changes also see India, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates being removed from the red travel list.
Earlier this week First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed the Scottish Government was carefully considering the possibility of Covid vaccine certificates , which could potentially be launched next month.
She said: “I can also confirm that we continue to consider very carefully the possible, albeit limited, use of Covid status certification for access to certain higher risk venues in future.
“We are currently developing an app to make access to Covid status certificates – which will include vaccination details – easier for international travel.
“The app will have functionality to support the use of such certificates for domestic settings should we decide that this is appropriate.”
