Just Travel Cover calls on Government to safely reopen travel

We are taking part in the Travel Day of Action (Wednesday 23 June) to highlight the ongoing challenges facing the travel sector, and the risks to businesses and livelihoods.

The Travel Day of Action is a pan-industry event – bringing together people and businesses from across the aviation and travel industries – including those who operate and organise overseas and inbound holidays, visits to family and friends and business trips abroad.

As a broker specialising in providing quality Travel Insurance for people living with pre-existing medical conditions, we have naturally been impacted by the pandemic and its affect on the number of holidays taken – a 78% drop.

The pandemic has been a catastrophe for the wider travel industry, closing borders, and even making most travel to and from the UK illegal for months on end.

Data from ABTA estimates that as many as 195K jobs have been lost or are at risk within the travel industry.

Without a meaningful summer season – a crucial period of the year for travel businesses – many thousands of livelihoods are at stake, as well as the ability of the travel sector to recover and reconnect the UK to the world.

Andrew Jackson, Managing Director said:

“Travel businesses have suffered more than most companies in this crisis. International travel has been severely restricted for almost 18 months now and, while other businesses have been opening their doors in recent weeks, the Government has been telling people not to travel. The lack of international travel puts businesses under enormous pressure – our business relies on people going on holiday and if people don’t travel then there is no demand for our services – it is a simple as that.” 

 

“The summer season is such a critical time for our business so we desperately need Government to safely open up overseas travel.

 

“We know demand for holidays is there, with 62% telling us they still hope for at least one holiday this year, and more than a third already booking for next year. We know people will need travel insurance more than ever, but the mixed messaging is making it difficult”.

The Travel Day of Action has support from the UK’s major airlines and tour operators as well as hundreds of small independent travel agents and leisure and business travel agents.

Collectively we are calling on the UK Government to:

• Allow international travel to return safely and in a risk managed way by properly implementing the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan for a traffic-light system, by expanding the green list in line with the evidence and making restrictions more proportionate, whilst keeping a strong red list to guard against variants. Government should also capitalise on the success of the vaccine rollout by removing testing and quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated individuals travelling from green and amber countries.
• Bring forward a package of tailored financial support, including extension of furlough support until April 2022, recognising that the travel sector’s ability to trade and generate income is much slower than first anticipated and more gradual than for businesses in the domestic economy.