The Save Our Summer (SOS) campaign has called on the government to scrap the travel corridor regime that regulated travel last summer and replace it with wider, more rigorous testing of passengers.
Nine in 10 respondents (91%) to a new SOS survey of nearly 400 of the travel firms backing the campaign said they did not want to see the same arrangements in place this summer.
The government’s travel corridor regime caused significant disruption for passengers and agents alike as destinations were rolled on and off the government’s tacit "safe travel" list, typically at very short notice.
The system, which was based on national rates of Covid infection, left passengers in-destination – sometimes hundreds of miles from areas of significant Covid risk – scrambling to get home quickly to avoid having to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to the UK.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps was among those to be caught out late last July when the government revoked Spain’s travel corridor with just a few hours’ notice, less than three weeks after the country was added to the travel corridors list.