The transport secretary has told people in Britain not to book holidays domestically or abroad, provoking an immediate backlash from the UK’s embattled travel industry.
“People shouldn’t be booking holidays right now – not domestically or internationally,” Grant Shapps told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. It was too soon, he added.
However, the travel industry on Wednesday appeared to contradict Shapps, saying that some package holiday customers could rely on refunds if the Foreign Office banned non-essential travel to holiday destinations.
A spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents said: “You can book a summer holiday now with confidence by booking a package holiday through an Abta member, and many travel companies are also offering additional flexibility to take into account the uncertainty created by the pandemic.”
Domestic and international travel companies have pinned their hopes for recovery on a return to something like normal service over the summer as the coronavirus vaccination programme allows people within the UK to emerge from national lockdowns. Holidays are banned under lockdown rules in England.
Shapps said Boris Johnson would lay out on 22 February how the UK plans to lift lockdown restrictions but said it was not clear that holidays would be included in those plans because of uncertainty over the development of vaccinations and pressures on the health service.
International holidaymakers face the added complication of potential quarantines on arrival from some countries, amid concerns about the possibility of vaccine-resistant variants of Covid-19. The government has said that arrivals in the UK who lie about their travel history will be liable for prison sentences of up to 10 years, although the plans have been criticised as being heavy-handed.
Easing of restrictions on international holidays would be influenced by “not just the vaccination programme here but the vaccination programme internationally, because people will be going outside of our borders”, Shapps said.
Abta said the industry could not afford to lose another summer by waiting for the rollout of vaccinations. The lobby group instead called for the government to consider vaccine certificates, often labelled “vaccine passports”, as well as testing.
It also called for more financial support specifically for travel businesses.
Some travel companies have reported increased bookings from customers hoping to secure a deal, and, in many cases, leave the UK for the first time since March 2020 or earlier.
Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said on Wednesday that he was “optimistic that people will be allowed to travel from May onwards”. Last week regulators banned an advertising campaign by Ryanair that said customers could “jab and go” this summer. The advertising regulator said it encouraged risk-taking.
However, O’Leary said losing another summer could result in travel company bankruptcies.
“Many companies will not see their way through next winter if we go through a second summer of no bookings,” he told the BBC.
Johan Lundgren, easyJet’s chief executive, said on Wednesday that the UK government must set out its plans on easing restrictions on international travel. The airline said last month that between January and March it planned to fly only 10% of the flights it operated during the same period before the pandemic, a reduction from the 18% of capacity used in the last three months of 2020.
“I’m positive for a strong summer if the vaccination programmes are successful, if it works on the variants … then we know that there’s a big urgent need for the government to unwind these restrictions,” Lundgren told an online aviation conference.
On Tuesday, the Anglo-German tour operator Tui said it expected a return to international holiday travel this summer. Tui has put on 80% of its 2019 summer holiday programme for 2021, with Greece and Spain the most popular destinations. Those two countries are significantly behind the UK in terms of the proportion of people vaccinated.
