The industry can’t expect a sharp relaxation in travel restrictions, with no solutions to quarantine likely to come overnight. But it remains vital to engage with the government and not just demand “get this sorted”.
That is the view of senior figures at Abta and the Business Travel Association (BTA) who are leading the outbound sector’s engagement with ministers and officials.
BTA chief executive Clive Wratten said: “All of us working with government know the scale of this crisis means nothing is going to happen quickly. Every industry is fighting for solutions.”
Abta director of industry affairs Susan Deer agreed, saying: “None of the possible solutions are going to occur overnight.” Deer leads for Abta in relations with the Foreign Office.
Wratten said: “We were pleased when the travel corridors came through. Everyone was fighting for the same thing and we got that.
“We continue to engage with the government, talking in the background to help guide them to where we need to get to.
“Unfortunately, it’s not happening as quickly as we would like, but the industry has had some successes.
“What is important is that we’re engaging and collaborating with government, offering solutions, not just saying ‘Get this sorted’.”
Wratten insisted: “The government has been pretty engaged. It hasn’t moved as quickly as we would like, but a lot of that is based on the information that has to be gathered.
“There is work going on to come up with solutions. It’s important people understand there are constantly suggestions and ideas, with industry talking to government the whole time. Some work and some don’t. There is no single solution to this.”
The government has settled into a weekly process of reviewing Foreign Office advice and the travel corridors list of countries free of quarantine restrictions.
Deer noted: “There is a weekly review process where the expert group looks at the epidemiology and then officials look at the advice and that goes to ministers for discussion.”
But she warned: “We shouldn’t be complacent and think things could not happen between the reviews.
“We can’t assume it will purely be weekly if there is a significant spike in a destination.”
Deer denied the government may have signalled a restart of travel too soon given the subsequent changes to Foreign Office advice and the quarantine-exempt list of countries.
She said: “Do I think the government did it too early? No, at the time we were looking at a restart, Europe was two, three, four weeks ahead of us.
“We followed after because of where we were in our domestic lockdown. Great consideration was given to what was happening. We can see that from the fact the global travel advice is still in place with exemptions.”
