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Right now, with Level 5 lockdown restrictions limiting people to travelling 5km from their front door the prospects of a holiday anywhere do seem more remote than a kayak tour around the Galapagos, but the restrictions won’t last forever and people will be able to travel again.
That’s great news. But when though? Hmm. We were afraid you might ask us that. It is a much, much harder question to answer. As it stands right now the restrictions we are living with will remain in place until March 5th. But even the most optimistic of forecasters – and there aren’t many of them – believe that life is most unlikely to return to anything close to normal for months rather than weeks. Even if restrictions are eased in early March, the best people can hope for is a drop to Level 4.
And what does that mean again? It is dispiritingly similar to Level 5, to be honest. What it does mean is that people will be allowed travel within their own county again. We will have to get to Level 2 before we are allowed to become cross-country travellers once more and we’ll need to contain Covid-19 even more before we will get the green light to travel across international borders again.
Is the Government upbeat about the prospects of that happening soon? In a word, no. At a Government press briefing last week, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar suggested international travel to and from Ireland may be off the table for all of 2021. “Maybe it will be the case that international travel is not possible this summer, this Christmas. I don’t want to close off that possibility today, but maybe we’ll have to,” he said, to the dismay of virtually everyone.
And what does Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan say? Oh, that’s not good news either. On Monday night he was pretty downbeat about the prospects of summer holidays in sunnier places this year. “I don’t think we’re headed for a summer where millions of people from this part of the world, from Europe, can expect to be heading to beaches that are in other than their own localities,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s realistic for us to foresee a situation where in the summertime, this year, that we will see a summer that’s characterised by the kinds of things that we all like to be in a position to do, which is fly off to other parts of Europe and the world for summer holidays.”
So, if people are suggesting it will be the end of the year before things start getting back to normal, should I book a foreign holiday for then? Well, we have heard worse ideas than that, but even that plan is shrouded in doubt. If you are not tied to school terms you could book a holiday somewhere sunny in November or October and hope (and, we can’t stress this enough, it would be a hope rather than a certainty) that the world – or at least a significant chunk of it – will have been vaccinated by then.
And is that likely? Who can say? Beware of all forecasters who say they know where we are going to be. Last April when we were in the early stages of the pandemic, many travel experts were suggesting that while the summer was most likely going to be a write off in terms, October would be the new July and people would be on holidays again. October wasn’t the new July though and while some people, ignored official advice and travelled to sunnier spots over the winter, the numbers travelling were dramatically down on past years.
But I saw on the news that people were still going on holidays right? Maybe I can chance it? People have certainly been travelling for non-essential reasons over the lockdown. On one day last week nearly half of all passengers arriving into Ireland were returning from a holiday, according to Taoiseach Micheál Martin. He told a meeting of Fianna Fáil that of the 800 people arriving into Ireland, 542 were Irish and 397 had been on holidays.
Well if they are doing it why can’t I? Because it is socially irresponsible, maybe? Oh and because the rules have changed dramatically in recent days. As of this week anyone caught trying to leave the State to go on holiday will be faced with €500 fines. There are also new requirements for PCR testing and mandatory quarantining for certain air passengers at designated hotels if they cannot provide a negative pre-departure Covid-19 test. There are also new quarantine rules for people travelling from Brazil and South Africa due to new variants of the virus there.
What is happening elsewhere? Things are up in the air pretty much everywhere. New Zealand has effectively said it is closed until 2022. And across the EU, borders are going up and restrictions are in place. Last week, the Austrian authorities fined close to 100 people – including some Irish citizens – for going skiing in St Anton am Arlberg against the rules. Other countries are effectively shutting themselves off to all non-essential travel.
What about Spain? We’re not surprised you asked. It is the most popular destination for Irish tourists and over a million tourists a year go there from this country. Before Christmas the Spanish tourist industry was optimistic it would be “open for business” from March. Then last week its prime minister Pedro Sánchez told a meeting of the executive council of the Word Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) that the country’s “internal plan is to promote a strategy that includes vaccination of the Spanish population at the highest possible rate. And we are going to advance with the vaccination at the highest rate until reaching 70 per cent of the population with immunity by the end of the summer.” He concluded by saying “only mass vaccinations will open the way to the normality that we want.”
Well that’s that then? Or is it? His tourism minister Reyes Maroto rolled back his comments almost immediately and said she expected the country to welcome tourists starting in late spring. “Our priority in 2021 is to reactivate tourism and resume safe mobility on a global scale as soon as possible. We hope that at the end of spring and especially during the summer, international travel will resume and travellers will choose Spain as their destination.”
Now, back to me. I have a holiday booked for 2021 that was originally booked for 2020. Where do I stand? In a big queue. There are as many as half a million people in the same position as you. A lot of people had holidays overseas booked for last summer that they agreed to transfer to this year. According to travel agents some of those people are running out of patience and looking for their money back. Under long established travel rules, people do have the right to a refund if a holiday is cancelled through no fault of their own.
There is also a fully bonded voucher system that protects people’s money should they chose to accept vouchers instead of cash refunds. It is worth remembering that the travel industry has had its worst year in history and are facing into another bleak year this year. If you have a holiday already booked for this summer, you have time on your hands and things changes very fast so it might be as well to wait until closer to departure before you make any decisions.
And if I book now? Well, people who booked in pre-pandmic times are likely to be treated somewhat differently to people who book with a more complete picture of the world in which we live. People who make bookings now will be afforded less comfort when it comes to refunds and rebookings. That makes it all the more important to book with your eyes open and to be clear what the refund policies are before handing over any money. Flexible options and small deposits will trump perfection this year more than ever before.
Anything else? It is also worth considering booking with a travel agent or tour operator. It has been repeatedly stressed in recent months that booking independently dramatically reduces your rights and your chances of redress should things go wrong.
And what are my rights again? EU regulations provide for passenger rights in the case of cancellation of transport services, while the package-travel directive provides protection for travellers who booked travel packages with a tour operator. People with package holidays booked are entitled to a refund if a trip has to be cancelled as a result of the current crisis. There is a time frame of 14 days for refunds to be issued. In the case of a cancellation by the carrier, passengers have the choice to be offered reimbursement or rerouting. Refunds must be processed within seven days of a passenger’s request in the cases of air and sea transport, and 14 days after the offer has been made or the request has been received for bus and coach transport . The time limit is a month in the case of rail transport.
I’m nervous about travelling though. You are not on your own. Irish people are now the most anxious in Europe and confidence in travel has been falling according to a recent State of the Consumer Tracker from Deloitte Ireland. It pointed to a decrease of 19 per cent in consumers’ intent to spend on travel and a decrease of 11 per cent in those planning to travel for leisure over the next three months. Confidence in staying in hotels was down by 6 per cent while confidence in air travel was down by 5 per cent. All told 47 per cent do not think it is safe to stay at a hotel right now, up 3 per cent on the previous wave.
In a normal January, travel agents and tour operators do as much as 40 per cent of their annual business but that has not been the experience this year, as people remain cautious. Travel agents say bookings are very sluggish for the early part of the year but there are at least some positive signs of a pick-up in the third quarter.
But domestic travel can still happen, right? That is certainly the hope. Last week Eoghan O’Mara Walsh, the chief executive of the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, said that “hopefully the domestic market will be able to consume the tourism product from the summer onwards”. He also said he was hopeful of “overseas tourism but probably in quarter three and quarter four of this year.”
What about long weekends away? There has not been a lot of interest in city breaks at least for the first eight months of the year but according to the industry there are bookings for September and October, a time when people hope vaccines will be rolling out and there will be an end in sight.
If I can’t go anyway is there any point in taking holidays at all? You probably have no choice. There have been no changes in employment rules as a result of Covid-19 so you when it comes to carrying over annual leave the normal rules of your contract apply.
Generally speaking that means that holidays accrued in 2020 must be taken within six months of the end of that holiday year so if you have a couple of weeks owed to you from last year you’d be as well of taking them before the end of June. It is also worth bearing in mind that, with certain conditions, an employer can compel you to take annual leave.
What about when kids are off school? Off school or home schooling? It probably doesn’t make that much difference in any event. There is a mid-term break coming up but the virus doesn’t care that much about that and you won’t be able to travel outside your 5k. We can’t say for sure what will happen over the longer Easter break but to be honest the chances of anything even resembling a holiday – at home or abroad – over Easter is pretty remote.
But what if I have a vaccine? Will that make any difference? It actually might. Some countries including the Seychelles have relaxed quarantine rules for people with proven vaccines while other countries including Cyprus are planning to do so. While the idea of a vaccine passport may sound unusual, they are actually very common in some parts of the world. For instance people are not allowed travel to parts of Africa without being able to prove they have been vaccinated against Yellow Fever. Some airlines are already planning to trial vaccine schemes while some cruise operators are likely to insist on vaccine certs before they will allow people board.