Abta wants the government to pursue international agreement on the vaccination status of children following the removal of Covid-19 testing for vaccinated arrivals from Friday.
But Abta chief executive Mark Tanzer does not foresee a rapid harmonisation of requirements, pointing out: “International collaboration through the pandemic hasn’t been at the level we’d have liked.”
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, Tanzer said: “There is confusion as to what fully vaccinated means for children. Other destinations are still not recognising children as fully vaccinated when they’ve had only one vaccination or when traveling with fully vaccinated parents.”
Abta wants “reciprocal understanding of what ‘fully vaccinated’ means and restrictions lifted for children who come into that category”, he said.
“We’re getting children double vaccinated now [and] I’m glad to see the vaccination programme being extended to younger children.”
But at the moment, Tanzer argued “it’s a mixed picture” in destinations, saying: “For now, people pretty much have to check on a destination basis what the requirements are. They also need to check Foreign Office advice to make sure they’re able to travel in and out of destinations freely.
“Of course, travel agents and tour operators will be able to help.”
Abta is also seeking a further simplification of the Passenger Locator Form (PLF) completed by all arrivals following removal of test-related sections of the form for those fully vaccinated from the end of last week.
Tanzer insisted: “The PLF definitely needs to be simplified. We’ve compared it with EU equivalents and shared that information with the government. It shows how complex our version is.
“It was created in response to testing requirements. Maybe part of it is going to stick around as part of general Advanced Passenger Information. [But] it needs to be digitalised.”
The Abta chief would also like an acknowledgment from the government that “travel restrictions didn’t have a huge impact on restricting the growth of variants”.
He said: “The idea that an international economy like the UK can keep a virus variant out through travel restrictions isn’t backed up by the evidence. The Omicron variant very quickly became community spread. Recognition of that from the government would be good.”
Abta will continue to collate destination requirements. Tanzer confirmed: “We’re doing a lot of work with destinations to keep on top of that, to keep the information flow to members so they can pass this on to customers.”