Brits fly home as FCO advises against all non-essential travel from the UK
The Foreign Office is now advising against non-essential travel from the UK due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Restrictions are in place for the next 30 days but could be extended.
Thousands of Brits have been returning to the UK after the Government warned that they might not be able to get home when further travel restrictions are in place.
But the FCO is not currently advising Brits overseas to get back to the UK.
The ban led to further calls from the industry to protect travel businesses.
ABTA chief executive Mark Tanzer said: "People’s health must be the number one priority but consideration needs to be had for the immense damage being done to UK travel businesses which are facing a crisis of unprecedented scale.
"Travel businesses are working around the clock to manage arrangements for customers, including repatriation, and have been trying to provide alternative arrangements for those with imminent departures but this has now become impossible as the virus has spread. Travel agents and tour operators are also facing a huge drop in future bookings.
"ABTA is calling for urgent action by the Government to help businesses in the short-term by making funds readily available to travel and tourism companies and to make temporary changes to existing package travel regulation with immediate effect. The existing financial protection structures and regulations were not designed to cope with a large-scale collapse of businesses.
"Without these reasonable steps, we risk healthy travel businesses going bankrupt, tens of thousands of job losses across the country and customers losing millions of pounds."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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