Prime Minister Johnson announced the roadmap for lifting the ban in England yesterday, and Brits who can’t wait for their summer vacation are already booking trips online, with a surge in visits to travel websites and a rise in flight and hotel bookings.
Boris Johnson announced yesterday a four-phase plan to lift the closure in England, hoping that the UK will return to normal in June, lifting the restrictions on maintaining social distance and allowing all business premises to resume operations.
Although there are still four months to go before Johnson announces the complete lifting of the vaccination measures on June 21, and the ban can only be lifted if four conditions are met, Britons who had their summer vacation last year in vain can’t wait and have started planning their summer vacation.
The four conditions include vaccination must be carried out as scheduled, followed by evidence that vaccination can reduce mortality or hospitalization rates, the third is that the infection rate does not cause hospitalization rates to climb, and the fourth is that the new variant of the virus will not endanger the roadmap for lifting the ban.
The BBC reports that the number of bookings from travel companies and airlines began to climb after Johnson & Johnson made a statement to Congress yesterday afternoon announcing the roadmap to lifting the ban.
Tui Travel, the UK’s largest travel agency, said the number of bookings for overseas travel increased 500 percent overnight.
Although the British government said it would not announce the lifting of the ban on overseas travel until mid-May at the earliest, Tui Travel said that the most popular destinations for Britons, such as Greece, Spain and Turkey, were flooded with orders for trips after July.
Thomas Cook Group, a long-established British travel agency, said the number of visits to the company’s website grew 100 percent from 3 p.m. yesterday onwards, with a large influx of orders for Greece, Cyprus, Mexico and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, all popular tourist destinations.
Thomas Cook Group said there has been significant growth in Family travel orders this summer, especially in August, and people are also starting to book for October and the Christmas holiday.
EasyJet flight bookings grew by 337 percent, and those for tourist destinations such as Alicante and Malaga in Spain grew by 630 percent.
Johnson said today that he was “very optimistic” that England would be completely relieved of its vaccination measures on June 21, but he also said he “can’t make any guarantees” and stressed that everyone should continue to be cautious.
According to the latest figures, 548 people have died in the last 24 hours in the UK within 28 days of contracting the disease, 8,489 new people have been diagnosed and nearly 18 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine.
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