A survey of Advantage Travel Partnership travel agent members has found 15% fear for the future of their businesses as the Covid-19 crisis continues into the critical summer period.
Speaking to BBC News this afternoon about the UK two-week travel quarantine that came in today, consortium boss Julia Lo Bue-Said, the industry was in a “desperate state”.
She said as well as the survey finding widespread fears about the future of members’ businesses, 70% are “extremely worried” about the situation and 20% are expecting to have to make job cuts.
Advantage’s 700 members account for £4.5 billion of sales in both the leisure and corporate travel sectors.
“The impact is already pretty catastrophic,” Bue-Said said. “We are already seeing businesses that have failed and businesses that unfortunately have let staff go. Mass redundancies are unfortunately unavoidable now.
“We are an industry that employs millions. We are the third largest employer as a sector in the UK. These are not small numbers
“These are businesses that are fighting for survival every day without the clarity that we need and without the planning. We are in a desperate state.”
Bue Said the quarantine was “illogical” and a measure that had been imposed far too late to have an impact on virus infection levels.
“Today’s a really frustrating day for our industry,” she said. “We’ve believe the measures are completely imbalanced, illogical and far too little to late.
“This should have been put in place back in March. We are now at the situation where four months into the pandemic the industry has had no income coming in whatsoever and lots of costs going out.
“We just cannot see the sense of it at all. It makes no sense at all that this is the right thing to do at the right time.”
Bue-Said added it was logical to impose a quarantine at the start of the pandemic and Advantage would have supported it then to keep the virus down.
She said although there is a three week review period agents need clarity now action now so the industry can be ready to serve its customers.
Asked about bookings, Bue-Said highlighted the subtle change in advice from the Foreign Office at the weekend when reference to advising against travel “indefinitely” was changed to “currently”.
If you are booked for travel in July I’m not sure what our industry can say to advise. There’s been no discussion with industry, there’s been no advice to industry, no consultation.
“There’s been a tweak to the advice. We think it still means the same thing but what does that mean?
“So, it’s very difficult for us to advise our customers and give them the professional guidance they expect.”
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