What is the ‘Travel Day of Action’?
In response to the continuing global COVID-19 pandemic, today (23rd June 2021) has been declared a ‘travel day of action‘. Businesses large and small across the UK travel and tourism industry are calling on the UK Government to:
- Allow international travel to return safely and in a risk managed way by properly implementing the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan for a traffic-light system, by expanding the green list in line with the evidence and making restrictions more proportionate, whilst keeping a strong red list to guard against variants. Government should also capitalise on the success of the vaccine rollout by removing testing and quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated individuals travelling from green and amber countries.
2. Bring forward a package of tailored financial support, including extension of furlough support until April 2022, recognising that the travel sector’s ability to trade and generate income is much slower than first anticipated and more gradual than for businesses in the domestic economy.
Go Cotswolds supports the Travel Day of Action
As a small family business, created from scratch 8 years ago, tourism is literally what puts food on our table. We’re not a huge profit-making corporate machine, we’re a husband and wife, with a 3 year old daughter. We love travel, and we love meeting new people, so we put these things together and made a little business out of it.
Since our very first tour in 2014, we have helped thousands of people from all over the world to discover the Cotswolds, this beautiful region of England we like to call ‘our back yard’.
And then, one day in March 2020, it all just stopped. For the best part of 15 months.
I don’t want to get all sob-story on you, because actually, after the initial shock and panic, we were very fortunate. We received some support, including furlough and grant funding from our local district and county councils. Lisa was able to go back to her old job. This has allowed us to pay our bills and keep our heads just about above water.
But furlough support is due to be withdrawn in October – just as tourism heads into the quieter winter season. There’s also no end in sight for international borders to reopen fully. Therefore, we support this Travel Day of Action.
We miss our international visitors!
It’s brilliant to be back doing what we love at last. But is it ‘business as usual’? No, far from it. That’s what the Travel Day of Action is all about.
We believe border restrictions help keep people safe from COVID-19 while vaccine programmes are being rolled out around the world.
But we want border restrictions to be implemented clearly and fairly, based on evidence.
And until travel is fully open again, we need continued, adequate support for the 3.8 million people working in the UK’s travel and tourism industry, especially for small businesses like ours.
