The travel firms are urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to signal that consumers can book overseas travel for holidays, business trips, and family visits from May 1, when the most vulnerable will have received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Johnson is due to reveal his plan for exiting lockdown on Feb. 22.
“Without a target date being set, millions of jobs and businesses in the travel sector are under immediate threat of collapse and the prime minister is the only person who can save them,” they wrote.
The travel bosses complained that government ministers “have done their best to torpedo the entire travel sector by telling UK citizens not even to book a holiday in the UK or abroad,” adding, “An industry which employs more than 1 in 10 jobs in the UK and represents 10 percent of our GDP has been pummelled from pillar to post in the last 12 months. Enough is enough.”
They said that their newly launched “Save Our Summer” campaign is “an SOS from the entire travel sector—from aviation to tour operators, hotel groups to cruise lines—as the government appears to have no strategy for rebuilding and boosting the travel sector as we emerge out of lockdown.”
They accused government ministers of breaking their promise.
“We were told that once the vulnerable had been vaccinated that restrictions would be eased and we could recommence operations. Yet the current tone is one of keeping travel bans in place, and relying on a failing quarantine strategy.
“This rhetoric brings into question what the point of vaccinating the top nine vulnerable groups is if we can’t then resume our lives and livelihoods?” they asked.
Citing progress in vaccination not just in the UK but also in France and Spain, Brittany Ferries CEO Christophe Mathieu said that “by spring we think there will be a clear case for the adoption of vaccination-led travel corridors.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department for Transport for comment.
