How will travel be affected by Covid-19’s new status?
Q As the Covid-19 status has been downgraded by the government, when will the Foreign Office change its advice?
Name supplied
A Allow me to outline the current travel advice for UK citizens, and what it means.
The Foreign Office has warned against all but essential travel anywhere abroad since 17 March. At first the travel ban was for 30 days, but early in April the government extended the advice until further notice.
On social media, it wrote: “Travel update: the Foreign Office indefinitely advises against all non-essential global travel.”
This unprecedented advice created a bizarre situation whereby holidaymakers booked to travel any time
this summer can legitimately ask for a refund because their trip appears, in all likelihood, to be cancelled.
Yet conversely, travel firms can reasonably reject such applications for now because the no-go warning could theoretically be lifted at any moment.
In response, the biggest travel companies – Tui and Jet2 – have instigated “rolling cancellations” – every few weeks cancelling another tranche of holidays. The current restart dates are 11 July and 16 July respectively.
Understandably, they hold out as long as they think they can, because as soon as they cancel a holiday it triggers an obligation to provide a full cash refund.
Anyone who decides to travel against the advice is likely to nullify their travel insurance. This has the possibly unintended consequence of, for example, causing a person who has an ill family member in Greece to travel there uninsured.
Yet the reasons for imposing this draconian rule have long since disappeared. It was never to do with the danger of contracting coronavirus.
It was brought in, very reasonably, at a time when borders were being closed at extremely short notice across the world, and when sudden flight bans were leaving British travellers stranded thousands of miles from home.
From a wide range of destinations, particularly in Europe and the Mediterranean, that set of circumstances no longer prevails.
Every week I write to the Foreign Office asking politely if it will therefore kindly introduce more nuanced advice, and every week it writes politely back saying it keeps the advice under constant review.
I now expect it to be relaxed on 4 July or shortly before, but only for specific named countries – likely to start with our European favourites.
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