Tour operators and agents feel increasingly upbeat about travel this summer but remain “hugely frustrated” by the lack of information.
Operators told a Travel Weekly webcast they were still “in limbo” because they could not plan for this summer despite being a few weeks from the planned start date for international travel of May 17.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, Cosmos and Avalon chief executive Giles Hawke called for “hard action and hard facts” from the government.
He said: “Overall I feel more positive than three months ago but I am hugely frustrated, by the way things are with the information we are not getting to enable people to make really informed decisions and travel. What difference does it make if they tell us now or in three weeks’ time?”
The recent Global Travel Taskforce was full of good recommendations but was vague with “no real detail”, he said, while government plans to give more information in early May was simply “not enough notice” for businesses trying to plan clients’ holidays.
He added: “We need to be able to plan things properly to give customers the correct information so that when we send them away, we know they’re going to be okay.
“Where’s the detail? Where are the [details on] things that we’re meant to be doing, rather than a bunch of recommendations? Just tell people what they can do. Customers are desperate to understand where they can go.”
More: Webcast: ‘I’m confident we will get people out to more destinations than last summer’
Nick Hughes, sales director for Gold Medal and Travel 2 parent dnata Travel B2B Europe, agreed “everyone is frustrated” in the industry over the lack of clarity for this summer.
“We just need more understanding of what we can do. There will be some [destinations] that are viable so tell us where they are. If feels like we are just coasting along at the moment,” he admitted.
Despite this, Hughes said there was cause for optimism, with vaccination programmes in key destinations for the group’s tour operators, such as the US and United Arab Emirates, already “fairly advanced”.
“We feel fairly confident. We feel we are on the verge of seeing everything coming back,” he added.
Amanda Matthews, managing director of agency Designer Travel, said there needed to be more information on the process involved when a destination travel corridor changes.
The company’s agents were having to explain to clients that even if a country is on the green list for May 17, it could change by the time their holiday takes place.
She said: “That green list is only valid for the week, or two weeks. You have to explain to them that really the list is going to be for an indefinite period. I think we’re going to have this uncertainty all the way through summer.
“Actually what we really need to understand is what is the process of changing those corridors? How is that going to work?”
Having to read and understand every supplier’s terms and conditions and then explain them to clients was also “proving very difficult” but Matthews said she was nevertheless upbeat about this summer.
“I’m really confident that we will get people out in the summer to more destinations than we did last summer. And I think the pent up demand will be there for people to make decisions at the last minute,” she added.