ARCHIVED - UK roadmap out of lockdown brings hope to Spanish tourism and air travel sectors

A surge in holiday and flight bookings in the UK indicates that Britons are keen to return to the Costas after 17^th May!

The third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe has reduced activity in Spain’s tourism sector to practically zero and meant a continuation of the extremely low levels of activity at most of the country’s airports, but while the announcement of Boris Johnson’s “roadmap” out of lockdown in the UK may have ruled out any imminent reactivation of international holidaymaking for Britons it at least contained indications that flights between Spain and Britain may resume in the spring.

In principle, and always subject to the latest data regarding Covid-19, the intention of the British government is to permit foreign travel from 17^th May at the earliest, and in reaction to this news airlines and travel firms reported an immediate surge on Monday in holiday and flight bookings. With infection rates falling in the UK and over a quarter of the population already having received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccination, the British government’s Global Travel Taskforce will reconvene to issue a report on 12^th April recommending how international trips can be safely facilitated.

This, according to Mr Johnson, will “give people time to make their plans for the summer”, and it seems clear that many are itching to do so. Tui reported that they had had their best day of bookings for more than a month, with particular interest in flights to Greece, Spain and Turkey, while Thomas Cook said bookings were "flooding in" and EasyJet boasted a 337 per cent surge in flight reservations.

The airline also saw a sudden 630-per-cent rise in holiday bookings for destinations such as Alicante, Málaga and Palma; however, it is worth remembering that the Spanish government will also have a say in whether visitors are allowed into the country, and that there is an understandable wariness of those from the UK due to the spread of the “Kent variant” of Covid.

Nonetheless, the announcement will be welcomed by the airports of Spain, where the number of passengers reported by Aena in January was just over 2.8 million after a year-on-year decrease of 83.4 per cent. International passenger traffic was even harder hit with a fall of over 88 per cent, and at some airports which are more dependent on foreign holidaymakers the numbers were still more drastic: at the Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera, for example, an average of only 53 passengers per day passed through the terminal building during the month, while at the Costa Brava airport in Girona the equivalent figure was just 28!