According to the BBC the impact on the tourism sector is devastating and it’s not just related to the curtailment of holidays overseas and the airlines and tour operators that take us there, but also to the inbound tourism economies, one of the biggest of which is, the UK.
Statista estimate that international tourism to the United Kingdom is expected to fall dramatically in 2020 due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Current forecasts suggest the number of tourist visits made to the UK from overseas could drop by 59 percent, down to 16.9 million in 2020. This is from a peak of 40.9 million overseas visits in 2019.
In 2018 travel and tourism contributed £218 billion to the UK’s GDP. This will be more than halved in 2020 with the additional impact of loss of tax contributions from the hundreds and thousands that are being put out of work and the social economic impacts that will result.
Can this awful situation be avoided? Of course it can. It just takes a few governments to agree to test on departure…..
A simple, yet a seemingly hard concept for some to grasp, is that the fact that the vast majority of people travel out and back within 2-14 days. Just being tested once in this time frame will, according to IATA, catch well over 90% of the any positive cases. If tests were conducted on departure out and back that number would be greatly increased and enable quarantine on arrival, that is suppressing demand, to be avoided. With TravelSafe Systems the two tests would cost less than £80, a price that most travellers would probably be willing to pay to have a COVID-19 free flight and destination to go to.
The UK Government should set the example, test all outbound travellers (UK outbound tourists and returning foreign tourists) on departure and ask for this to be reciprocated. It should also perhaps take a holiday itself on Airport Departure tax to help fund it and stimulate demand.
The overall economic cost to put this in motion is tiny compared to the total economic loss, probably well over £100 billion, from the UK travel and tourism sector….
#savetravel #testondeparture #makingtravelsafeagain
Making travel safe again 