Travellers Should Expect Longer Waiting Times Roughly Fifteen Times Longer At UK Borders As The Government Switches To A Traffic Light System For International Travel - And The Cost Of Flights To Portugal More Than Double
Travellers should expect longer waiting times roughly fifteen times longer at UK borders as the Government switches to a traffic light system for international travel - and the cost of flights to Portugal more than double.
Hundreds of Britons scrambled to book last minute breaks after a handful of quarantine-free destinations were unveiled by [/news/grant-shapps/index.html Grant Shapps] at a [/news/downing-street/index.html Downing Street] briefing on Friday night.
Portugal was widely tipped for the 'green list', but would-be travellers appear to have waited for confirmation before booking flights to the sun-soaked nation because in the minutes after the announcement, flights to Lisbon soared by 25 per cent.
Holidaymakers could have paid £264 at 12pm yesterday for a return ticket from London Heathrow to Lisbon, travelling on May 17 and May 24. But following Mr Shapps' announcement prices skyrocketed by £68 - with holidaymakers forced to fork out £332 for the same flights.
Adding yet more complications to the stress finally going for a summer break, Border Force director Paul Lincoln said passengers must accept there will be increased delays at 'each stage' of their journey, with staff required to check '100%' of all travellers coming through.
Mr Lincoln told a Downing Street press conference that the introduction of health checks at the border meant it now takes, on average, five to 10 minutes for staff to process each passenger arriving into the UK.
He said: 'For the time being, passengers will need to accept an increase in the time taken at each stage of their journey.
'It currently takes a Border Force officer five to 10 minutes to complete all the necessary checks, which means that even for the most compliant passenger, it might take 14 or 15 times longer to process than before, compared to around 25 seconds.
'Where people do not have the correct paperwork, it can and has taken considerably longer, including when we need to serve fixed penalty notices for non-compliance.'
From May 17, people in England will be able to visit those destinations without having to enter quarantine on their return.
A Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Porto will set holidaymakers back £232.99 on 17 May, but would have cost a mere £14.99 if they were able to travel a day earlier
Carvoeiro village in Algarve, Portugal. Eager British holidaymakers rushed to book last minute getaways after the handful of quarantine-free destinations were unveiled by Grant Shapps at a Downing Street briefing tonight
The countries on the 'green list' from May 17 are: Portugal including the Azores and Madeira; Australia; New Zealand; Singapore; Brunei; Iceland; the Faroe Islands; Gibraltar; the Falkland Islands; and Israel
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Mr Lincoln said Border Force was still under instruction from ministers to check '100% of passengers' but that it would be making some paperwork digital, tour du lịch hà giang such as the passenger locator form, in a bid to 'speed up' the process, while more staff would be made available to carry out checks.
Heathrow Airport's chief executive said the Government must 'urgently address the unacceptable situation' at the UK border.
John Holland-Kaye said in a statement: 'Long immigration queues are an inevitable result of under-resourcing, not an inevitable result of extra checks.'
Those planning getaways to Faro on the Algarve from May 17 will pay inflated prices, as airlines tend to increase the cost of tickets in line with demand.
A British Airways flight from Heathrow to the popular holiday hotspot costs £448 on May 17 compared with £237 two days earlier.
Another flight from Stansted to Lisbon costs £262 on May 19, more than double the price of £128 on May 14.
Thomas Cook said that bookings were already up 250 per cent on last week, with more demand expected into the evening.
Comparing the whole of Friday to the whole of April 30, Thomas Cook said web traffic was 85 per cent higher.
Frustrated social media users have taken to Twitter to vent their fury after noticing the dramatic price jumps, with others boasting that they had the foresight to book their breaks before tonight's announcement
One user said: 'So glad I booked my Portugal holiday before it got the green light because flights have gone from £120 to £500.'
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Another added: 'Just waiting now for the complaints that flights to Portugal etc from the UK shouldn't be £300 to £450 per person.'
Ryanair said tonight it will add an additional 175,000 seats to the Algarve, Lisbon and Porto following the announcement, with British Airways also laying on additional flights.
Britons were warned that fares were set to double minutes after Mr Shapps's announcement tonight, with Booking.com's chief executive Glenn Fogel saying holiday prices 'are already going up.'
He said: 'There's so much pent-up demand.
Everybody wants to go travelling, but we all want to do it safely.'
David Child, head of PR and brand at Thomas Cook, later confirmed bookings for Portugal were 'through the roof' immediately after the announcement as people had been 'poised, ready and waiting to go'.
'We took in the first hour from 5pm to 6pm as many Portugal bookings as we took in the whole month of April,' he said.
But Mr Child cautioned that 'absolute numbers' of bookings were 'small', saying the firm was going from 'low numbers of bookings to modest numbers of bookings'.
'Yes, it's a surge absolutely, but the market is still down on where it would normally be this time in the year,' he said.
He said that while prices of flights may increase, those on package holidays may find their money goes further in terms of accommodation.
Mr Child said hoteliers were 'not raising their prices yet' as they still had many rooms to fill.
Hundreds of Britons rushed to book last minute breaks after a handful of quarantine-free destinations were unveiled by Grant Shapps at a Downing Street briefing tonight
Tourists sunbathing in Praia do Camilo, Lagos, Faro district, Algarve, Portugal
The Transport Secretary today revealed Britain's green. amber and red lists as England tour hà giang prepared for international travel
Grant Shapps unveiled his long-awaited 'green list' at a Downing Street briefing tonight, insisting we must make 'absolutely sure' that the countries we reconnect with are 'safe'
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Ahead of the Government's announcement, demand for flights to Portugal had already driven up prices as holidaymakers anticipated its green categorisation
Similar leaps in prices were seen in the cost of flights to other 'green list' destinations, with a trip to Gibraltar jumping from £49 at 12pm today to £134 at 6pm, according to Skyscanner.net.
And the price of a flight to Tel Aviv in Israel, £252 at 12pm today, rose by £38 after Mr Shapps' announcement, to £290.
The cost of flights to Singapore also jumped in price between May 15 and May 17, with Britons able to fly via London for £278 compared with £389.
Daily bookings on Skyscanner in the UK for travel to Portugal have increased by 118 per cent since the start of May, a spokesman for the website revealed.
Martin Nolan, a Skyscanner Traveller expert, said: 'This is such welcome news for our travellers who have been eager to get back out into the world.
It is fantastic to see the advances destinations have made regarding traveller safety have enabled popular destinations such as Portugal and Gibraltar to be back on the agenda for summer.
'Travellers will of course be delighted with the news of possible international travel, not just for holidays and leisure travel, but also for those who will now be able to travel to be reunited with loved ones abroad.
'We have seen travellers willing to adapt to the new measures quickly and positively, as long as it means they can get away safely and within the guidelines, so we expect to see a busy weekend of bookings ahead.'
The British Overseas Territory, close to the south coast of Spain, became the first nation to fully vaccinate its entire adult population in March
Chief minister Fabian Picardo said the Rock will offer a 'great British staycation in the Mediterranean' after travel restrictions are eased in Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown
All the countries on the UK's first green list have similarly low Covid infection rates, meaning the risk of travellers carrying cases between nations is low
British Airways said it would be laying on additional flights to Portugal following the announcement foreign travel can resume to some destinations later this month, but added it was disappointed with restrictions for amber countries.
Chairman and CEO Sean Doyle said: 'We're pleased that our customers are able to start travelling again to some countries, including Portugal, and we've put on additional flights from London, Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh to Faro to help people get moving.
'What's clear is that with high levels of vaccination in the UK being matched by other countries, we should see more destinations going 'green' before the end of June.
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news halfRHS" data-version="2" id="mol-42c86550-af61-11eb-bc03-99494f092e4e" website of flights to Portugal soar by 20% after holiday 'green list'