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Noel Josephides looks tired. Two weeks ago, when the UK government added Portugal to the list of travel brokers, Sunvil’s chairman issued a statement saying he was delighted to start selling holidays to Portugal again, “just in time for the final weeks of the peak summer season, but also in time for the glorious fall months of September and October through November. “
Earlier this week, the rumor was that the country’s brief period as a “safe destination” was about to come to an end, with coronavirus cases in the country exceeding 20 per 100,000 people, the level at that the UK government is considering activating the quarantine. terms. On Tuesday, the UK ambassador to Portugal fueled speculation that the country would soon return to the quarantine list when he warned that airlifts can “change rapidly”. The hint that the August 20 decision could be reversed was enough to unsettle British tourists in Portugal and cause a rush to return to the UK before the dreaded deadline. EasyJet sold out all its flights from Faro, which serves the Algarve, to Britain’s airports on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
“It seems they start with a rumor and clues, then there is panic abroad and everyone rushes to book [a flight home]. It is not a way to function, rumors are not eliminated and they run for a week, ”said Josephides.
This time the rumors turned out to be false, at least for English tourists. On Thursday afternoon Grant Shapps, the UK transport secretary, announced that there would be no change to the list of travel brokers this week, although Wales and Scotland disagreed. Shapp’s reprieve was unexpected but did not reassure tourists or tourism businesses. The damage is already done. “Unless we have some kind of test in place, you better forget about the rest of the season,” Josephides said. “It just doesn’t work in Portugal or anywhere else.”
After weeks of roulette on the travel corridor, tourists have so little faith in quarantine rules that some took to Twitter to ask Shapps if he was likely to change his mind tomorrow. The fact that England’s decision differs from that of Wales and Scotland did not help dispel the confusion.
“He intended to return to England on Sunday. I booked a backup flight for tomorrow just in case (as do many Brits). Are you saying we’re fine until Sunday? I need to make a decision regarding Friday’s flight. ” Nicola Syms tweeted to the transportation secretary.
In Portugal, the Algarve, where the British represent 40% of all tourists, is the most affected. The executive director of the Portuguese Hotel Association, Cristina Siza Vieira, said that Portugal’s incorporation into the travel corridor on August 20 “felt like an oxygen balloon.” Hotels that had been closed reopened and the staff who had been laid off returned to work. “It had an immediate impact on bookings and made hotels dream of a good September, October and November. Now people are really frustrated and discouraged, especially in the Algarve ”.
Chitra Stern owns the Martinhal hotel group, which has two properties in the Algarve and two in the Lisbon area. She said: “We will be lucky to have a third of our business in the Algarve this year.” Stern said the phones began ringing within minutes of the airlift announcement on Aug. 20, with people interested in booking for the last week of summer vacation and in September and October, and they rang again Thursday with cancellations. .
Soul & Surf, a surf and yoga retreat near Lagos in the western Algarve, has been fully booked for the past two weeks, albeit with a Covid-safe lower occupancy level of 14 guests, rather than the usual 26 , but this week he started getting emails from concerned customers. “It’s very frustrating,” manager Adam Simpson said. “This change every two weeks will prevent people from risking traveling.” One British guest planning to extend his stay at the retreat has already gone home and another canceled less than 12 hours before the scheduled check-in date.
The yo-yo -ing situation has forced some companies to completely paralyze. James Power’s tourism business, Grape Discoveries, offers personalized wine tours in and around Porto. After the blockade was lifted in mid-May, he knew he had some difficult months ahead. About 90% of its clients come from the United States or the United Kingdom. With a ban still in place for Americans, he was betting on the British. But despite the August 20 decision to include Portugal on the UK’s list of travel brokers, they have not returned.
“With all this instability, we find that people are postponing or canceling their trips, so we have put our trips on hold for now,” Power said.
Pedro Figueiredo, co-owner of Worst Tours, a popular “anti-tour” agency, is equally dejected. “First came Brexit, then the lockdown, then there is talk of re-taking quarantine measures,” he said. To sum up his despair, he resorts to the phrase in Portuguese rain in the wet – literally, “to rain on what is already wet”, its equivalent to whipping a dead horse.
• Reporting by Oliver Balch in Porto, Célia Pedroso in Lisbon and Rachel Dixon in London
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