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15 per cent of Advantage members don’t know if they’ll have a business post Covid
A survey of members by Advantage Travel Partnership found 15% don’t think they will have a business at the end of the pandemic.
Speaking to BBC News on Monday morning, chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said said a poll of members over the weekend showed 70% are extremely worried and 20% said they will have to make staff redundant.
She said the quarantine and the lack of information from the Government was having a ‘catastrophic’ impact on the industry.
Describing the 14-day quarantine as ill balanced, illogical and ‘too little too late’ she said since March the industry has had ‘no income whatsoever, just lots of costs going out’.
"It’s a sector that is fighting for its survial," she said. "We need action and we’re in a desperate state."
Lo Bue-Said said agents were unsure what to say to their customers about trips booked this summer.
Referring to a slight change in the wording of the Foreign Office travel advice, she said it’s still difficult to know what it means.
"It’s very difficult for us to guide our customers," she said.
Advantage and other key industry bodies wrote to the Government last week calling for a rethink of the quarantine and for travel corridors to be urgently put into place with key holiday destinations.
Simon Calder spoke to the BBC news programme a few minutes later saying the quarantine was counter productive and was full of oddities.
"You can step off an aircraft and immediately get on public transport and then, the only way you can get out of the quarantine early is to get back to the airport and fly out of the country again," he said.
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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