Tour operators will not but airlines will, Wizz Air is already flying to many destinations, with EasyJet and Ryanair soon to follow, along with Jet 2 and others. Expedia and the like are taking hotel bookings. The days of the inclusive tour operator are on the slide, with Thomas Cook having already gone to the wall.
In my experience some hotels may have been exclusive to the travel group, but within that group they had a German arm, a British arm, a Scandinavian arm etc, so many different nationalities at the same hotel. As well as the hotels there are many B&B's and private villas etc so its going to be relatively easy to travel in a few weeks time.
I thought that the EU had already said that member countries could not discriminate against each other, whether enforcing quarantine on some but not others or exempting some from quarantine and not others, indeed the UK was threatened by the EU when the idea of a French exemption was first mooted....perhaps that's the reason it never came in.
From a news article "According to the European Commission, any restrictive measure on free movement is justified in the interest of public health as long as they are "proportionate and non-discriminatory". As the UK is still in the Transition Period this still applies to us.
The death of the package tour is one of those persistent urban myths. Office for National Statistics data (up to the most recent set) shows a continuous annual increase in the numbers of U.K. travellers taking a package tour. It was just over 15m people in 2014, and had reached 17.2m by 2018.
Thomas Cook collapsed because of the debt that it was carrying. Jet2.com Holidays, easyJet Holidays, BA Holidays are all growing, as are many others. TUI alone would have expected more than 6m U.K. customers this year.
As with high street retail, it’s the fact that the market has grown so enormously that has driven the bulk of the change to market shares. New entrants and the internet are incremental business, in many cases.
There are indeed instances of tour operators managing inventory at wholly-contracted hotels so that they do sell stays simultaneously to different national markets, but it’s managed fairly carefully and isn’t as common as it might once have been, owing to some unsuccessful experiences.
Anyway, my point is that package tour operations are still a very large part of the market and, by consequence, they define lots of other characteristics of the market as a whole. The Chief Executive of Melià Hotels wrote about the interdependency of all the component parts of the travel industry last week, and suggesting that the critical mass to make operations viable again relies on such a large number of factors, many of which are bipartite, that the complexity is an absolutely enormous challenge, with high risks of things going wrong to start with.
As an example, a Eurowings flight took off from Germany on Sunday, only to return four hours later as the airport that it was heading to turned out to be closed. This was because a local decision to open the airport had subsequently been overturned by a regional authority, and Eurowings hadn’t caught up with the latter change quickly enough.
So yes, Expedia and booking.com etc., will indeed sell a hotel room at present, but they make two points; firstly that they don’t restrict bookings to only be made by those with a definite legal eligibility to travel, and secondly they make it clear that if you book a non-refundable rate, it’s still
caveat emptor.
It may not be immediately obvious, too, that a lot of hotels are actually
not showing. Some chains are consolidating operations into only some properties in certain locations. Some properties took the decision as early as March that they wouldn’t reopen until October, if their seasonality profile made that sensible. Some properties have not recruited the usual number of staff, or could not, or cannot.
Hotels that are opening or will open are having to look at things like timed access to facilities, disposable towels for loungers, one bulk provision of room towels at check in, ‘bookings’ for plated breakfasts etc. The All Inclusive business model is not apparently compatible with social distancing and hygiene requirements at all where buffets are involved.
Rooms may need to be deep cleaned and then sealed ready for each new guest, and rooms may need to be vacant for a period before the next guest can check in. Some hotels are suggesting 72 hours.
Self catering properties may also need to allow fallow periods, and/or bring check out times forward and push check in times back to allow for additional cleaning.
The entire cruise industry is out of the picture until mid August at the earliest; major events are cancelled and a lot of folks are going to be feeling a severe financial pinch.
And that’s before the real unknowns about second waves of infections are known, or which countries will allow British people in and when, and how long our own inbound quarantine period will last.
The one thing that the travel industry generally is being clearer about is that bookings made before mid March were one thing, and there are allowances for that. But, if you book anything now, you should be aware of the risks and be ready for the possibility that one or more component of your trip may not be possible, but you will not be covered for your inability to avail of other parts as a result.
Unless, of course, you book a package tour......
I think the blanket quarantine will be gone by 25th July at the latest i.e. 3 weeks after domestic tourism is due to restart and shortly before families start returning from holidays. They will not want everyone trying to take a UK break, it would be chaos, overload capacity and cause more risk of spread on crowded beaches etc. Lifting the travel advice for Europe on 4th July would tie up with domestic restart. The 14 day quarantine could be place for some countries for a very long time, changing as the virus flares up around the world.
France has said its maintaining border controls until at least the end of the year. Unless there are flare ups they are likely to be a formality. Schengen treaty allows temporary introduction of national border controls.
Its a fair point on tour operators in regards to numbers, but there are plenty who don't book through them. The travel advice against non essential travel makes it more difficult to go abroad for a holiday but its not a ban.
Depending on the level of cover offered by EHIC in each individual country and the health of the individual, and their wealth that is not necessarily the case. A young healthy person with no assets has little or nothing to lose if they get ill in many European countries. The risks of being stranded are pretty low in mainland western europe. Its crazy to leave Europe without travel insurance though.
It’s very important, I think, to understand what EHIC will and won’t cover cardholders for, and what the actual risks to travellers are.
EHIC cover varies by state, and standards vary by state, and it’s always been a bit of an issue that, sometimes, those relying on it have been (illegally) denied benefits and have had payments demanded. This can be difficult to argue if you don’t speak the language and are in a position of vulnerability. Ethical standards are not uniformly high.
It’s basically there to get you to a hospital and to get you triage treatment in an emergency. If you need a GP to come to your hotel, you’ll need to pay. If you need to see one out of hours, you’ll probably need to pay. You may be required to pay for prescription medication. If you cannot produce your EHIC card and passport then you may not be treated without making payment.
If your illness or injury means that you need to curtail or extend your trip, there is no cover. If you suffer loss such as theft then there is no cover. If you require consular assistance then, given that this is currently reduced during the ‘no travel’ advice, you may be inconvenienced further. Emergency identity documents for the purposes of repatriation may not be available.
Although these are not normal times, it’s worth also noting that, statistically, claims for medical treatment during travel are actually a relatively small part of a travel insurer’s risk profiling.
Anyhow, all of this is to say that travel is really not going to be nearly as easy as some folks seem to think or hope, and the U.K. quarantine arrangements may be completely irrelevant in many cases or, as I suggested upthread, the whole idea of them is to deflect attention away from the fact that many of us will simply not be able to travel as normal by dint of our domestic record in dealing with the virus itself.
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