Sales dropped to “almost zero” following the introduction of latest testing restrictions, with one leading travel executive saying “nobody is booking for any season”.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, Blue Bay Travel chief executive, Alistair Rowland, said: “It had been great; we’d been pretty strong, and in the kind of fragile recovery we were transacting ahead of 2019, certainly ahead of 2020.
“But then it’s come down to not quite zero, but not far off in terms of the change of restrictions, the increased talk of Omicron and people being worried about lockdown.
“Web traffic is still very strong, but nobody is buying for any season, whereas when everybody was clear that they couldn’t travel, they were still booking for 2023 and later in 2022. Right now, nobody’s booking anything and I think that will be the case until the rules have changed,” he said.
Rowland was speaking before the removal of 11 countries from the red list, but said customers were most put off by pre-departure tests which the government has confirmed will remain in place until at least the first week of January.
“[It is] not only the cost of [the tests], but also the risk of having to stay in resort for the following 10 days at their own cost – that was a real turnoff,” he said.
“And that’s where I think the industry should really push to get that once again removed, because it’s not actually adding anything. So from that day, that’s what killed off the traffic and certainly the bookings.”
Despite the current downturn, Rowland predicted there could still be something of a peak season in January and February.
“I think there’s a chance we’ll have a peaks. The current winter business is the business that’s under threat,” he said. “Ordinarily, it [winter] would be quarter of our business but it became 60% of our business. But that clearly has died off completely. So I think we’ve lost the momentum going towards Christmas earlier than otherwise.
“But if there’s ever a time for this to happen, arguably December is the best time. I think from January, once we’re past Christmas, people will start to look at summer 22 and beyond.”
He added: “I do still see a peak, but I see a peak with consumers booking ahead and taking a risk-averse view of anything in the very short term. Sadly, that means we’ve probably lost the best part of this winter, which all the agencies and tour operators desperately needed to get some cash in.”