The UK Government Makes UK Tourism Travel Sick

“Following the science” has been the mantra of the British government throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Although there is an ongoing debate as to what that actually means, it remains a good sound bite and – sort of – rings true. Where it seems utter nonsense, however, is in regard to the 14-day quarantine rule for visitors that came into effect across the United Kingdom last week.

That rule means that anyone who lands at a British airport or arrives at a British port would need to self isolate for 14 days. Now which visitor, especially a tourist, has the time, the means and patience to sit in a hotel room or worse for two weeks waiting to start their holiday or visit? Yes, you’re thinking what I’m thinking: forget that! Why spend two weeks in a holding center outside London going slowly stir crazy when you can breeze into Paris or Rome or anywhere else on the Continent. The irony of ironies being that those countries on the Continent have lower infection rates for Covid-19 than is currently the case in the UK.

This new 14-day quarantine rule will cripple not just the already frozen travel sector but also the UK’s tourism industry. Furthermore, the government implementing it has not been able to detail any scientific evidence to support this drastic move. So much so, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, has not endorsed it, instead, putting the onus back on the politicians saying with uncharacteristic vagueness: ‘They make the policy, and they make the timing decisions.’

What he failed to say is that politicians can make bad, even disastrous, decisions. Looking on in amazement at this latest government edict are the nation’s hoteliers and bed and breakfast owners, to say nothing of the residents of the thousands of towns and remote villages that depend on tourism to survive. The reason for their amazement is a simple one. Why at the height of the pandemic were the UK borders open with all and sundry let in without as much as a temperature check and now with the virus receding does the government effectively close the frontier by quarantining everyone who wants to come into Britain!

Such a random decision may be unpopular as well as illogical but it has other longer-term effects too – and they’re all bad. Tourism contributes £106 billion to the British economy and employs 2.6 million Britons. Until the pandemic this was a growing and lucrative sector of the UK economy. There was a hope, now forlorn, that by 2025 this sector would be worth more than £257 billion to UK economy. No small sum, in fact, that is worth approximately 10% of the UK’s current GDP. Now, however, in the short term alone, Visit Britain estimates £19.7 billion could be lost to the economy because of the pandemic.

The virus and the havoc it has wrought is bad enough. However, this one decision to quarantine visitors to the UK would seem to be adding salt to the already raw wounds not just of the hard hit travel and tourism sector but to the whole British economy. Britain as much as Italy or Spain needs visitors, and their dollars and Euros. This action of preventing visitors coming smacks of defeatism and also, more worrying still, shooting oneself in the foot.

There is one glimmer of hope though, if a slight one. From 29 June, it is expected that a number of so-called ‘air bridges’ will be set up with countries that now have low infection rates, countries such as France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. This would allow travel between these countries without the need to self-isolate.

This may just be a strategic move on the part of the UK government though. British Airways, Ryanair and Easy Jet have all threatened legal action against the government on account of the quarantine rules. A new grouping Quash Quarantine coalition, which represents some of the country’s largest hotel groups and tour operators, has also threatened legal action. All of this has put the current administration on the back foot, and rightly so as these companies may be big and represent wealthy clients but for all of them they are fighting for their survival, and when that happens people will do anything to keep their companies and livelihoods afloat.

The quarantine rules also smack of lazy if not cowardly thinking. Barriers if they need to be erected at all need to ensure that visitors from countries with high infection rates are monitored and if necessary quarantined. So I just fail to see the logic of quarantining visitors from all countries, and especially from countries where the infection rate is considerably lower than Britain’s, and that means most of the rest of Europe.

Old quarrels about Brexit need to be put aside for a pan-European consensus on dealing with the virus and the implications that flow from it. The whole idea of a ‘global Britain’ open for business is at stake here. The Continent needs British tourists and the UK needs visitors from Europe. It could be a ‘win-win’ scenario for all concerned. Yet the British government seems intent on forcing an illogical and ill thought through decision on its continental neighbors while at the same time wrecking the British tourism industry, and, unbelievably, without a shred of scientific evidence anywhere in sight to tell us why.