Dear Reader

NOTHING wrong with talking up the market. And we can only hope that today’s so-called ‘Sunshine Saturday’ turns out to be a scorcher, with the travel association ABTA proving to be correct in predicting that around three in five Britons are planning to head abroad this year.

Of those, more than 30 per cent aim to book earlier than usual in search of getting the best deal now that Covid restrictions are behind us.

As an instant pick- me- up, nothing quite beats having a confirmed holiday in the diary, even if it’s several months away. I’ve got Guyana (pictured) written in ink for early April — a South American country about which I know almost nothing apart from its strong connections to the Carribean and how it’s the only nation on that continent where English is the official language.

EasyJet Holidays reports that it was filling a plane a minute at the peak of its post-Christmas sale and Ryanair this week raised its annual profits forecast by £200 million.

The only proverbial fly in this cheery ointment is hearing the dreaded word ‘testing’. At the moment, it’s only in relation to

China, with, as of Thursday, passengers arriving from there to England required to take a preflight test — but not, strangely, if they are heading for Scotland via a country such as Dubai.

Where it becomes even more complicated is that individual EU states are free to set their own policy on flights from China.

Meanwhile, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says testing is ‘unjustified’ given the high rates of vaccination in Europe, and the traditionally cautious World Health Organisation said this week there is no evidence of new variants in China, despite the surge in cases.

This is beginning to sound eerily familiar but let’s hope it’s nothing more than a distant cloud trying to muscle in on ‘ Sunshine Saturday’ and that the travel industry tills will be ringing throughout January louder than they have been since 2019.