‘You do not just turn a travel industry back on’

The Man Who Pays His Way: Journeys remain fraught with complexity

Wild smiles: a photographic safari group in Kenya’s Maasai Mara (Paul Goldstein)

Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.

“Being back in the Mara made the stresses of normal life melt away,” writes Viv Lees. “We were graced with an abundance of wildlife, located by quality guides at a camp that felt like home. We had been away for too long.”

As 2022 approaches – which, I hate to remind you, will be year three of the coronavirus crisis – that is the kind of comment that anyone in the travel industry would want in their guestbook.

After many months of disruption, Mr Lees felt he had returned to a very special kind of travel normality: staying at a safari lodge deep within the lively wilderness of Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

It is a month since the government announced that Kenya, along with 46 other countries, would be removed from the “red list” - which still requires a lengthy, expensive hotel quarantine on return to the UK.

Viv Lees had strayed a fair way from his home in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. He was taking part in a photographic safari led by Paul Goldstein, who is also co-owner of Kicheche Camps – and arch-critic of the government’s handling of international travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I have a full photographic group in Kenya with me currently,” Mr Goldstein told me. “They booked two years ago and rebooked four times, but kept the faith.

“They have all visited before and were determined to have their safari despite the overpriced tests they were forced to book for their return.”

Reality awaits when they head home from Nairobi airport – where they will not be allowed to board their plane to London Heathrow unless they have completed an online passenger locator form for the UK.

From experience, I don’t envy anyone who decides to rely on the wifi at the capital’s Jomo Kenyatta airport to fill in the questionnaire – described this week by a senior figure at Eurostar as comprising “a list of redundant questions for six pages”.

Evidence abounds that the stresses of Covid-19 life have certainly not melted away. The UK’s inbound tourism industry has yet to be properly recognised as the disaster that it has become, with high coronavirus rates and a tangle of bureaucracy keeping visitors out.

The only identifiable, consistent traits among UK ministerial pronouncements on the matter are incoherence and a determination to impose a set of rules out of line with international norms.

Just one example: if someone on a plane to London tests positive, only fellow passengers with NHS jabs escape quarantine – foreign vaccinations are regarded as not good enough to confer protection.

Add in the decision to ban Europeans from entering the UK with their national identity cards, and this is a very good time not to be involved with inbound tourism.

Reports from tourism enterprises who would love to be welcoming EU citizens to Britain consistently mention uncertainty among their customers about post-Brexit rules, while those catering for arrivals from further away are hearing concerns about the UK’s ballooning Covid cases.

Yet the pain felt in rich nations is nothing compared with the suffering endured by tourism-dependent nations.

“Kenya and the rest of the developing world need tourists now,” Paul Goldstein told me from his safari camp.

“The wildlife needs tourist dollars, as do the millions employed in travel. There is no furlough here for workers or wildebeest.

“People seem to think everything is OK now. This is both ignorant and naive. You do not just turn a travel industry back on.”