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The current status with regard to International Travel or is it ?
Sunday, 24 Mar, 2021
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So just to be clear is this where we are at in the UK?
As of today, if you want to go overseas you can do but only if you are going for essential work or education. When, and if, you come back you may or may not have to quarantine, depending on the denoted, by the FCO, colour of the destination you have just come from (red is bad) in a hotel near to your point of entry but not at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. The pleasure would be all yours.
On April 12th, our esteemed Sec of State for Transport will be delivering a report with, in theory recommendations as to the route out of isolation and towards freedom of movement both in and out of the country. This report should be a reasonable plan given that the Sec of State and his colleagues have been liaising with persons within the travel industry who actually live and breathe the business. The problem with this is that in order to be a better report the people writing it need to understand the fundamentals of in and out bound travel and tourism. To date the odds quoted by Paddy Power are quite long on this.
As far as the schedule is concerned at the moment from May 17th it may be possible for (English only?) residents to travel internationally. At the same time hotels will be open in the UK for overnight stays but the pubs will remain closed apart from outdoor drinks although restaurants will be open for booking. All non-essential shops will be allowed to open so the credit built up over so many months of non-essential spending other than through Amazon is likely to be zapped before any decision on travel. Amazon in the meantime will be launching international travel with a rocket to Mars funded by the lack of tax.
From June 21st many of the domestic restrictions will be lifted and we will all be holding hands and skipping everywhere.
Between now and midsummers day the government in the form of token ministers and Sec of States from virtually all departments will be leaking information contrary to the above and warning that all that was promised may now not be possible especially when it comes to travel. Any plans that were made based around the Prime Minsters roadmap given a few weeks ago cannot be relied upon due in the main to the upsurge in cases in mainland Europe of the Kent Variant which has in part maintained our levels of export despite our exit from the EU. In fact according to Govt sources June 30th is the new date for release and draconian fines of five thousand pounds are now official policy for those that digress (Dominic Cummings and Stanley Johnson will be exempt).
Parallel to this those in the know claim, and once more the whispers are from government level, that a traffic light system will be put in place with other countries given a status depending on a combination of vaccine levels and infection levels. Malta, Israel, UAE and the USA are a few that are understood to be in the race for Green Status. Now what this green status will mean nobody seems to know – no leaks on that one. And no comments from the potential emerald level countries as to whether they want us or not ! Will it mean a vaccine passport, the very thing the government were so adamant they would not tolerate a matter of eight weeks ago or will it mean tests (which are astronomically expensive) at point of departure and entry or indeed a combination of both.
No doubt we will find out what the plan is more than once.
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Graham McKenzie
Graham has demonstrable history of working in the leisure, travel & tourism industry. 20 years leading one of the worlds leading online B2B travel publishers TravelMole , non-executive director of UK's leading Travel Brand agency designate.com. Strong professional with a BSc (Econ) focussed on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science.
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