January news
Not a great end to 2020 or a great start to 2021 up in Europe if we are being honest but this will be short term. December was initially positive with the vaccines starting to get authorized and used but the new Covid variant soon put paid to any celebrations later in the month and into the start of the new year. The numbers of infections in the UK reached very serious levels and the rest of Europe is not far behind. The good news is that we now have three vaccines approved for use and close to 3 million people have been vaccinated in the UK so far. Some great data available here https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
Most of Europe is now in some form of lockdown to reduce the increases that we are seeing everywhere which means that travel is far from the minds of everyone short term, though the dream of travelling gets stronger!
All European countries are ramping up the vaccine process with targets of getting their populations vaccinated by late Spring. Infection numbers should drop due to present lockdowns and should drop more significantly from February onwards as the vaccine starts to influence the spread. Freedom of movement will follow this with people travelling around Europe as early as May and holidays all through summer. We should see cases of Covid only very rarely over summer due to very high vaccination numbers which will give NZ/Australia confidence in announcing their borders re-opening late in 2021. I would hope for an announcement in Sept for opening in Oct/Nov. This means making sure agents are aware of, and trained on, all available products and any changes in July/August in preparation for what will be a huge rush to travel to NZ/Australia. USA is likely to approve travel before this as they will want summer business. This will involve possible ‘Vaccine passports’ and instant testing to ensure no issues but I would expect USA to follow Europe in opening borders to allow visitors in July/August meaning agent staff need training in May/June.
Kilroy Travels have looked over the My Training Guru on-line training platform and want their products/suppliers loaded ASAP so please contact John Hingston john@mytraining.guru for details to get ahead of the curve. Great to see positive use of the time we have before travel starts again.
Qantas have said that they will be flying again in July which seems optimistic. It has been suggested that it will not happen, and the airline will just offer credits for the flights they then cancel, hopefully that is not the case and we will see planes in the air. The demand is clearly there to travel, and we have reports and numbers to show this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55654127
I hope you had a great Christmas and New Years are all well and keeping safe out there.
keith@tailormaderepresentation.com or phone +44 77699 71217
Keith Marsh
Tailor Made Representation – Helping you connect