British tourists could be in for a long cold winter

It is not unusual to hear a rumbling of thunder emanating from the general direction of the Caribbean at this time of year. September and October tend to be the riskiest months of the Atlantic hurricane season (as Hurricanes Irma and Maria demonstrated to notably devastating effect in 2017); a period when the horizon can go dark with horrible speed. This is the reason why prices for flights to – and holidays in – the region are generally at their cheapest during these shoulder months, and why they rise considerably when the storm threat peters out at the end of November – just in time for Christmas on the beach.

This year, however, the clouds massing (symbolically) over the Western Hemisphere’s favourite sun-zone are symptomatic of a different problem – the fact that many of its islands are understandably concerned about letting overseas visitors into their resorts. Including tourists from Britain. At the end of last week, Barbados added the UK to its list of “high-risk” nations – our rising number of Covid-19 infections seeing us bracketed with Brazil, France, Spain and the USA on a list of countries whose citizens will need to hop through extra hoops if they want to enter this popular fragment of the Lesser Antilles.

As of tomorrow (October 1), a tourist coming in on a flight from a British airport will have to present a negative Covid-19 test result – with the test having been taken no more than 72 hours prior to arrival. So far, so reasonable. But even this will not be enough fully to unlock the door. Even with evidence of non-infectiousness, British tourists are required to check into “approved facilities” and wait for a further test, which will be administered four to five days after the date of the first. Only if this produces a second clean bill of health is the visitor allowed to travel freely around the whole country.

It should be stressed at this point that these measures are not as draconian as they sound – and that Barbados very much wants to accommodate holidaymakers from the UK as it nears the busiest part of its year. This is visible in the three sentences which introduce the entry-requirements page – “Pack your bags! We’re heading to Barbados. We have new travel protocols for safe entry into our island”. It’s there too in the warm words of tourism minister Lisa Cummins, who, on Friday, said that “we want to ensure that our citizens welcome all our guests to the island with a high level of confidence, because we have put measures in place at the border for all our visitors”. Furthermore, the list of “approved facilities” includes some of the island’s most luxurious hotels – including Sandals Royal Barbados (sandals.co.uk/royal-barbados) and Cobblers Cove (cobblerscove.com); (see visitbarbados.org/covid-19-travel-guidelines-2020 for the complete line-up, and the small-print of the regulations).

Realistically, this means that you can book into the five-star hotel you were dreaming about during the gloomy months of lockdown - and that, while your movements will be restricted for the first two or three days of your getaway, you will nonetheless be staying in the resort of your choice. Bearing in mind that the majority of visitors to the Caribbean want nothing more than to doze on a lounger while lifting little heavier than a cocktail glass and a room-service menu, these limitations on going outside the resort will be at worst a minor inconvenience, at best merely an "enforcement" of the lie-in-and-lazing-about schedule that was part of your plans anyway.

But the devil in the detail of Barbados’s change of stance is not the practicalities of a week by the waves near Speightstown. It is more that it is emblematic of a hardening of attitudes to British tourists as – for the second time – the UK fails to get to grips with Covid-19. Throughout the summer, the travel conversation has largely been about which countries the Government deems it viable for Britons to visit – with a growing undercurrent of side-chat about quarantine windows and whether they are needed for travellers coming home from destinations where the virus is again on the march. But now the tables are turning. With Britain’s own Covid rate increasing on a daily basis – today’s figures have us at 64 cases per 100,000 people over a seven-day period – it is no longer a “simple” question of where Britons can safely take their wanderlust and their holiday currency. Over the next few weeks, we may well see other nations following Barbados’s example in saying “well, OK, you can come – but only if you abide by our specific set of conditions”. And it will remain that way until Britain is back “on top” of the virus (whatever that means, and whenever that might be).

In this difficult year, the spending power of the British tourist carries less weight than it ever has. Britons make up a sizeable proportion of the 1.35 million tourists who journey to and sunbathe in Barbados every year – but that does not mean that the island is ready to beckon us all in, irrespective of our handling of Covid-19. Nor is Barbados alone in this reluctance – St Lucia, for example, is also protecting itself with similar entry requirements (see stlucia.org/en_UK/covid-19 and gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/st-lucia).

Tunisia, meanwhile, has barred the gate to Britons for the time-being. Two days ago, it announced that the UK was being demoted from “orange-” to “red-country” status – which means no entry at all (until Monday, British citizens could visit the country with a negative test result and a period of self-isolation in a hotel). This is a relatively moot point – Tunisia, as with every African nation, is not currently on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s travel-corridor list. But the turning-away is not insignificant. Tunisia’s tourism industry is still recovering from the after-effects of the terror attacks in Sousse in 2015. This time last year, there were few things it wanted more than incoming planes filled with British winter-sun-seekers. Now, it thinks it is better off without them.

At the root of this problem is the same issue which supplies the bedrock to many of our present woes – the abject failure to establish a properly functioning British track-and-trace system. Bluster and diversion about world-beating this and over-demand that cut no ice beyond these shores – the rest of the planet merely sees a country that is unable to identify the whereabouts of the enemy in its midst. This woeful situation is tacitly acknowledged in the FCO’s own travel advice for Barbados, where it cautions that “you should not use the NHS testing service to get a test in order to facilitate travel to another country. You should arrange to take a private test”. And unless the testing situation witnesses a huge upsurge in capacity and capability, the rest of the planet will continue to view us with a worried expression and a cautious checking of paperwork. It is already going to be a difficult winter, but if we are not able to sharpen our tools to keep Covid-19 in sight, it will be a difficult winter spent squarely at home, no matter what edicts the Government announces about the R-rate in other countries, and the necessity of quarantine windows.