Is 2023 finally the year this decade gets going for international travellers?

Despite the gloom and paralysis in the UK at the start of January, Simon Calder is very optimistic about the next 12 months and beyond

Holidaymakers at Ohrid in North Macedonia with the hills of Albania in the distance (Simon Calder)

Minutes after midnight on 1 January 2020, I cheerfully tweeted that the new decade would be the best in human history for travellers. All the evidence pointed that way.

Since the start of the Jumbo Jet age half a century earlier, things had only got better. Horizons had relentlessly widened, costs had fallen steadily in real terms and safety had improved almost immeasurably.

The travel business is ever-optimistic, and I paid little heed to a foreign news story The Independent had broken the previous afternoon, which began: “Health chiefs in China are investigating an outbreak of a respiratory illness.”