Ministers’ holiday warnings ‘completely irresponsible’, says travel boss

Exclusive: ‘Reckless comments destroy businesses and create huge emotional tensions for consumers’ – Julia Lo Bue-Said, Advantage Travel Partnership

Distant dream: Palma, Mallorca (Simon Calder)

A leading travel industry boss has condemned the latest holiday warning by a cabinet minister as “completely reckless, completely irresponsible”. 

The care minister, Helen Whately, told BBC Breakfast: “My advice would be to anybody right now, it's just to hold off on booking international travel.

“The prime minister launched a taskforce looking specifically at international travel. That will be reporting back shortly. It just feels premature to be booking international holidays at the moment.”

At present all overseas leisure trips from the UK are illegal.

The government’s Global Travel Taskforce is due to report on 12 April with proposals to reopen international travel from 17 May at the earliest.

Ms Whately was speaking after a government adviser, Dr Mike Tildesley, warned: “International travel this summer for the average holidaymaker is extremely unlikely.”

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The University of Warwick epidemiologist told BBC Breakfast: “If we bring more of those variants into the country, we really run the risk of undoing all the good that we’ve done with our current vaccination campaign.”

The care minister’s warning against booking foreign holidays echoed similar admonitions from the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, and the home secretary, Priti Patel.

Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of the Advantage Travel Partnership, a consortium of travel agents, said: “It’s completely reckless, completely irresponsible. We know what timescales we are working to, we know the milestones.

“Politicians should be working towards those and not making reckless comments that destroy businesses and create huge emotional tensions for consumers.”

The pilots’ union, Balpa, tweeted: “Another day, another minister throwing our industry under the bus. And undermining the work of the government’s own Global Travel Taskforce to boot.”

A spokesperson for Jet2, the second-largest holiday company, said: “We are seeing increased confidence and bookings right across the board. It is clear that for many people, they want nothing more than to get away this summer.

“In response to demand, we have just this week added more flights and holidays to a range of destinations in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Canaries, Spain and Portugal.”

Airlines UK, representing carriers including British Airways and easyJet, is working on the assumption that, as the vaccine rollout accelerates both in the UK and abroad, a phased easing of restrictions should be achievable.

Tim Alderslade, the chief executive, said: “We know that universal, restriction-free travel is unlikely from 17 May but under a tiered system, based on risk, international travel can meaningfully restart and build up, with minimal restrictions in time.”

The government’s roadmap says any decision to open up to international travel will depend on the epidemiological picture, the prevalence and location of “variants of concern”, the progress of vaccine rollouts and the impact on coronavirus transmission, hospitalisation and deaths.