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Last minute Canary Islands holidays will be back on sale in time for a mid-term break after the islands have been added to the UK travel broker list.
Vacationers will be able to visit any of the eight main islands of the archipelago without having to be in quarantine for 14 days upon their return. The measure takes effect from 4 a.m. on Sunday (October 25), Grant Shapps transport confirmed on Twitter Thursday.
TUI, the UK’s largest holiday company, said it will have holidays for sale to Fuerteventura and Lanzarote from Saturday (October 24), with more flights to follow.
TUI UK & Ireland Managing Director Andrew Flintham described adding his most popular winter sun destination to the safe list as “a positive step forward”.
“We have not been able to bring people to the Canary Islands for 89 days, when the sudden quarantine and subsequent travel notice were imposed without prior notice. We are therefore delighted that UK flights will resume from Saturday. “
The operator will also have flights twice a week to Saint Lucia and Cuba during the winter, starting Sunday.
Adventure company Explore Worldwide said it will now increase the number of small-group trips it takes to Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife and La Gomera during the winter. Managing Director John Telfer said that, in addition to being great news for travelers, the opening of the islands was “a much-needed blow for all our hoteliers and guides in the Canary Islands”.
The Maldives, the Greek island of Mykonos, and Denmark were also added to the list of travel corridors that already included Greece, Gibraltar, Sweden, and Germany. However, the German government has placed the whole of the UK in a high alert category, meaning that anyone arriving from the UK must self-quarantine upon arrival in Germany, starting at 11:01 am on Friday; and the UK is on Denmark’s list of banned countries.
A spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents described Shapps’ announcement as “a bit of light at the end of a very dark tunnel for the travel industry,” but stressed that the pandemic had paralyzed travel abroad, leaving companies make difficult decisions around jobs in the coming weeks. “
Paul Charles of the PC Agency, which has been campaigning for affordable tests at airports for months, agreed that the outlook for winter travel is “tough.”
“We are facing six cruel months to travel anywhere. Share prices [in travel companies] has fallen; airlines have reduced capacity; more businesses will fail and more staff will be laid off. The short-term outlook is tough, so we need effective testing, “he said.
Airlines currently operate at less than a third of their usual capacity. BA announced further cuts to its flights on October 22. It will not fly more than 30% of its scheduled flights for the rest of the year, after it reported a loss of £ 1.17 billion for the July-September period. EasyJet has said it will fly at 25% of its capacity next year, while Ryanair has dropped to about 40% of its regular flights through March.
Charles said he is hopeful that travel opportunities will be much better starting in the summer of 2021. “By summer, the quarantine system will be a shadow of what it was before. There will be effective testing regimes [in place] and internationally agreed standards. The whole process of leaving will be easier. “
He predicts that demand will be so high that it will exceed availability. “There will be two years of demand concentrated in one and the airlines will not have enough flights. They will operate at approximately 60-70% of their capacity. “
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