NIGEL THOMPSON

THAT’S it, then. Your summer holiday by the Med is cancelled and Britain has put up the shutters for overseas visitors.

Public safety must of course come first, so if the scientists and medical experts say a 14-day air passenger quarantine is the right thing to do, then so be it. Whether it should have been done weeks or even months ago is another argument.

Now expect a summer staycation stampede as millions of Brits frantically swap the costas for campsites, holiday parks and self-catering cottages around the UK, with Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden saying this week that holidays at home could be permitted by early July.

Where does this quarantine leave the UK’s beleaguered travel industry?

Tour operators and airlines will be utterly dismayed at the news as it wrecks any lingering hopes of getting Brits on European beach holidays in the peak summer season, when they make up to 70 per cent of their money.

How many people will be able, or willing, to put up with the inconvenience of having to self-isolate as a family for two

weeks after a one-week getaway? Hardly any, I suspect.

Also, we still have no clear idea how social distancing at the airport and on holiday jets will be managed, which some will find off-putting, and which countries will even allow us in because of the UK’s high Covid-19 death total.

For UK inbound tourism the quarantine is a disaster too, as millions of high-spending foreign holidaymakers will almost certainly not be jetting in

to visit shops, restaurants and attractions and fill all those five-star hotel rooms.

Yes, the quarantine will certainly help the staycation industry, which desperately needs a boost after being hammered with £22billion of lost revenue and some businesses forced to shut permanently.

But, while it’s hard to argue with the safety and the science, the Government probably just threw a large part of the British holiday industry under a bus.