Like most I have been dreaming of a holiday, it has been now, over 12 months since I travelled abroad, I had 2 trips booked for 2020, Mallorca and Montenegro; Montenegro being the destination I haven’t visited before.
I have been asked often what the situation, in my opinion, will be for travel in 2021, being perfectly honest, my answer is I don’t know, the vaccine will I believe make a huge difference, at the moment many countries have banned UK citizens from visiting anyway, rightly so in my opinion, however with the vaccination building in numbers a time will come when destinations and overseas governments will want to see their crucial tourism industries start to gain momentum, many counties rely almost solely on foreign visitors, and many UK travellers.
My predictions are if the vaccination all goes to plan, and the baulk of the population is vaccinated. Lots of overseas destinations will start to open to the UK; I do not see this happening realistically until the summertime, maybe slightly later, there may well be the odd destination that bucks the trend, as Dubai has recently, and the Maldives also, however, I guess we must ask if it is the right thing to do anyway?
I have like many read in media that travellers are rushing to book for 2021 holidays, I have seen no evidence of this, nor many of my travel friends either, of course, some are travelling; however, it's not easy, firstly it’s making sure you have an insurance policy that actually offers a Covid-19 coverage, secondly keeping up to date with the restrictions here in the UK, and also the destination, it's confusing even for me! after all those considerations you then have to factor in if you can self-isolate for 10 days when you return if need be, plus if you cant travel can you wait for the refund, all these issues we didn’t have in 2019, and the start of 2020 have to be taken into account now for the moment anyway.
Undoubtedly there will be a shortage of flights, many airlines have cut back so much, I read yesterday that Gatwick, for example, had just 21 passengers that flew, a normal January day would have almost 60,000 passengers, this will take a long time to get back to pre-March 2020 levels, so moving forward if you are flexible then you should be able to get to where you want to, what I have noticed is that some of the larger airlines have cut routes that are less well known, to focus on the main routes they have, this does mean that airlines such as British Airways have dropped a lot of the holiday routes we have been used to using in the past.
Even with the above, I am positive for our industry and the need for the British to travel; we love our holidays don’t we, destinations aren’t going anywhere, with patience and planning we will travel again, and be able to experience the wonderful destinations and culture out there in the world.
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