The recovery for travel starts here, with rewards for those who make the first move

The industry of human happiness has never felt more miserable but 2021 promises much for the tourist, from cheap sunshine to high culture, reports Simon Calder

Luxury cruise ships being scrapped in Izmir, Turkey. With the pandemic pushing the multi-billion-dollar cruise industry into crisis, some operators have been forced to cut losses and retire ships earlier than planned (Getty)

Advent brings many traditions. In the travel journalism world, the last few weeks of the year are customarily spent curating inspiration – compiling lists of interesting destinations to contemplate in the coming 12 months.

December 2020 has been different. The key task for the first three weeks, as it has been for the past nine months, was to keep across the amorphous, random tangle of restrictions on travel that the coronavirus pandemic has brought.

Midwinter’s day brought a ripple of travel bans aimed squarely at arrivals from the UK. As I write, almost all of Europe is off limits with Italy, for example, warning citizens about the Mutazione Inglese. Prohibitions of flights from Britain are spreading across the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic domino has just fallen as it becomes the latest nation with a travel ban.