Plans of thousands ruined in year to forget

THAT’s it for holidays abroad this summer.

The sorry truth is that the Government’s decision to advise against all non-essential travel to mainland spain – and re-impose a two-week quarantine – will have a dramatic knock-on effect, as millions of families rethink their travel plans. and all this just when it seemed like overseas travel was finally struggling back onto its feet.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab made clear yesterday that other countries could be next.

Refusing to apologise, he said he and his Cabinet colleagues ‘must be able to take swift, decisive action’. Yet such swift action was sadly lacking back in april, when people were still pouring into Britain from all over the world, bringing the virus with them, without going into quarantine.

since then, there’s been hardly any ‘action’ at all on testing arrivals at airports.

Instead, we now have a blanket rule for spain – the most popular destination for

British tourists – which could affect up to two million people in the coming months. The decision was taken late on saturday after ministers discussed rates of infection in spain. But the data was available on Friday, meaning the announcement could have been made more than 24 hours earlier, before thousands had set off for the airport, and giving those in spain time to change their plans.

True ‘decisive action’ surely would have made a clear distinction between mainland spain, which has seen a surge in infections, and the Canary Islands, Majorca, Menorca and Ibiza, where there have been fewer cases.

Yes, the Foreign Office has said that we can visit the Canaries and Balearics. But we will still have to quarantine for 14 days on our return. It’s increasingly difficult to track and trace the Government’s thinking on travel, whether it’s the ‘air bridges’ debacle, which cruises to avoid, the continued red-listing of Portugal and now a blanket ban on travel to mainland spain with hardly any warning.

Thousands will now have to start the grim process of seeking refunds from holiday companies and airlines, or accept vouchers, while travel firms who had hoped to claw back some money in august will find themselves plunged back into crisis. The summer of 2020 is turning out to be a chilling one.