The industry has been urged to “keep banging the drum” for sector-specific support for the travel industry in the aftermath of tightened government restrictions which has caused a “nosedive” in confidence.
Speaking ahead of the Scottish Passenger Agents Association (SPAA) centenary awards, the group’s president Joanne Dooey stressed the need to “really push” a positive message around travel and its safety, including those in the trade posting about their own trips, if no support is forthcoming.
She said: “In October, everybody was reporting being up on 2019 figures, with fantastic results coming in. Everybody was on a real high, the beginning of November was the same. And then obviously in the past few weeks, since the latest announcement about the variant, [confidence] has taken a bit of a nosedive.”
She stressed: “It’s been agents again, and operators, having to deal with people moving holidays and changes. It’s lowered the morale of a lot of people.”
Dooey said the SPAA wrote again this week to Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon calling for sector specific support for the industry and business rates relief.
She said the SPAA is “really hoping we do get something” but admitted she was “not confident at all” that financial support would be given.
Dooey believes the industry should “keep banging the drum” on the issue, and vowed the SPAA will continue to write and speak to Sturgeon, noting: “She did say on a few interviews that if we do go into some sort of lockdown that we’ve got to get some sort of support.”
But Dooey also pointed out Sturgeon has been “pushing it back to Westminster” to make the decision.
Free PCR tests for customers would also “really help” the industry, said Dooey as she said the sector had been largely happy with the government’s policy to reintroduce PCR tests for all arrivals into the UK.
She said the “biggest stumbling block” was the return of pre-departure tests in destinations because “people aren’t wanting to go in case they get stranded”.
“Consumers are saying that they’re just not taking that risk in case they get stranded,” said Dooey. “They would be quite happy to come home and, if they do test positive on a day-two test, isolate.”
Describing how the latest Plan B announcement from government, in addition to recent tightening of international travel rules, has affected customers’ confidence to book future holidays, Dooey said: “People are struggling to come to terms with it. They’re not wanting to take that risk.
“We’ve got people who have moved so many times now. They think, ‘just give me my money back’. We‘ve had quite a bit of that in the past couple of weeks from people who’ve had their third of fourth move. So yeah, it has had a major impact on confidence.
She said: “We do need to see some positive messages from the governments. People are absolutely petrified. It’s all the fear mongering.
“A majority of people that work in the industry have probably travelled themselves during Covid, and we are very confident and had great experiences. We are telling consumers that but we’re still getting people saying ‘Nicola Sturgeon and Boris [Johnson] say we can’t travel’.
Dooey expects the peak sales period in January to be affected by the recent decisions but said some customers will still want to book.
She noted that the weeks leading up to Christmas are traditionally “a bit quieter” for many agents in any given year, but that she had gotten more confident after strong sales in October and November.
“I was set for having a really strong January,” she said. “But I’m not disillusioned. I don’t think it’s going to be what we expected. But I do think there will be people out there saying ‘I’ve had enough, I’m getting myself booked’.”
She reported customers who were intimated by crowds in major UK cities “saying they feel safer abroad”.
“There are a lot of consumers out there that will just now say ‘I am going on holiday, no matter what the government say’,” she added.