Quarantine kills travel – there are alternatives the Government needs to invest in quickly
The Government’s latest blanket quarantine announcement was the news the travel sector didn’t want to hear. Nor was it expecting it at 8pm on a Saturday evening.
Blanket quarantine measures kill travel. They create fear and uncertainty and stop the very essence of travel flowing effectively. They also create enormous financial damage as consumers question whether they should continue with their existing holiday or travel plans, or indeed put off booking altogether.
Since the Government bombshell on Saturday, that is precisely what has happened. Contact centres at airlines and tour operators are again inundated as their customers seek urgent advice and clarification, ask for refunds and rebookings. Travel firms, and credit card companies, are already under enormous pressure dealing with the millions of refund requests from earlier on this year during the initial lockdown period.
Blanket measures are not the solution – effective testing is. The UK Government promised us a “world-beating” Test & Trace system that would put others to shame. Yet it is the UK that is currently a national embarrassment.
Test & Trace should be the flagship Government product of its day. If we return from holiday, and show any sign of symptoms, then we can immediately self-isolate, have a test and get the results. This enables the vast majority who get tested to carry on with their livelihoods after being found negative.
Other countries are far more ahead of the game. Take Austria, where a simple test at Vienna Airport can give you results within three hours and save you 14 days of self-isolation. Why haven’t our airports already got such a system in place? It could be applied to departures and arrivals to give massive reassurance to anyone travelling, as well as clear information to immigration officials at either end of the route.
If you blend effective Test & Trace, with swab testing at the airport on arrival and even 24 hours of self-isolation while waiting for test results, then these are effective alternatives to blanket quarantine which have less of an impact on the economy.
If we are to live with coronavirus for the foreseeable future, we have to invest in measures that give confidence to consumers. A rollercoaster ride of quarantine measures will not bring the certainty we so desperately need.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), a million UK jobs are still under threat because of such quarantine measures being on the table. They are a blunt tool which provide no reassurance or certainty.
The timing is questionable. The decision seems to have been made by the Joint Biosecurity Centre and Public Health England precisely at the moment that the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps was in the air flying to Spain for a holiday. He has long fought for travel corridors to be open, providing consumers with certainty that their holidays would be protected. Other officials, and cabinet ministers, resorted to the old-fashioned quarantine measures which are having such a devastating impact.
Travel companies were seeing green shoots of recovery since the blanket quarantine to the UK was abandoned by the Government at the start of July. It knew it was an unworkable, ineffective policy.
Yet it’s re-introduced it for Spain at a time when travel firms badly need cash to come in to help stave off a cruel winter. From large to small, some of our best-known travel companies and airlines are on the brink of bankruptcy as the cash dries up. And there are many jobs at risk as a result.
Unless the Government sees sense and takes alternative measures, the sector will be a shadow of its former self by December.
Paul Charles is CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency and spokesman for Quash Quarantine
