Leading agents are split on how the cost of testing is effecting demand for travel this winter ahead of the implementation of the government’s test to release scheme this week.
The Global Travel Taskforce, set up by the departments for transport and health, is still to confirm which tests, and which providers, will be accepted as proof travellers returning to the UK is free of Covid and can be released from quarantine with a negative result.
Test to release is due to start on Tuesday.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast after the Canary Islands were removed from the government’s travel corridor list last week, Amanda Matthews, managing director of Designer Travel, believes there was been a “step-change” in consumers’ attitudes to travel.
She said: “People are not in the same space as they were before. They are as frustrated as we are, and just want to get away.
“Of the clients we’ve spoken to that are due to depart [to the Canaries] imminently – nobody’s cancelled. I know a lot are higher-end clients, because that’s what we do, but they are just saying: ‘Get me to Dubai or the Caribbean instead [where there is no quarantine].”
“People are just thinking, why would we be stuck here in our house? We might as well be stuck somewhere getting a bit of sunshine, as we’ll be probably locked down at home soon anyway,” she said.
Matthews said her clients were more than happy to pay for a Covid test on the fifth day after returning to the UK in order to be released from quarantine sooner, under the test to release scheme coming into force on Tuesday.
“Many people will continue with their planned holiday – not least because until the Foreign Office [FCDO] advice changes, airlines and tour operators are still operating flights and holidays – and then pay for the test to release test,” she said.
But Tony Mann, managing director of Bradford agency Idle Travel said that, for many of his clients, the added cost of testing to travel and to be released early from quarantine on return, were prohibitive.
He said it was “frustrating” that the government’s Global Travel Taskforce had not yet revealed the details of its selected testing providers as it meant he was “yet to be able to tell my customers what’s going on”.
Mann said: “We’re now saying to people, ‘if you’re on a seven-day holiday, consider it’s probably now 12 days – if you are prepared to pay to make quarantine shorter’. And it’s all cost. We came out of lockdown, and there was the good news that the Canaries had been put onto the list, but then there was the negative news that they needed a test. It was £150 quid on top of the holiday, then people got it down to £120, and then we had discounts down to £75.
“Then we had the news that the Canaries might switch to the antigen test and we were thinking: ‘Wow, we’re getting there; it’s getting better’, but then we get a punch in the kidneys last night to say that the Canaries are now coming off the list.”