Should you book your 'green list' holiday now? Our experts have their say
The Government’s announcement of the “green list” was supposed to unleash a surge of pent-up travel demand.
But the debut of the 'traffic light system' was somewhat underwhelming for British holidaymakers, with only Portugal, Israel and Gibraltar genuine travel contenders for now.
So what now? Book bold and early to secure a bargain or hold your nerve and wait for more options?
Here, our experts debate the two options.
'There's no need to panic book'
Hugh Morris
As if a warning from the gods, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake has struck the South Sandwich Islands. The foreboding is not of the perils of climate change nor the fragility of one of the world’s foremost penguin colonies, but of booking your “green list” holiday now.
I joke, but it is apt that the weekend after the obscure South Atlantic territory was a surprise (if useless) addition to the Government’s long-awaited holiday roster, it is hit by a fairly decent earthquake.
The message is clear: don’t panic-book your summer holiday now, off the back of a traffic light system that now feels increasingly like a practical joke; wait, give it a few weeks and soon enough you may be basking not in South Georgia, but on the Cote d’Azur.
I know it is tempting to feel compelled to book now that the return of international travel has been confirmed for May 17. My esteemed colleague Annabel makes valid points: there are deals to be had, availability will dwindle at the best spots, all infection/vaccine graphs are pointing in one direction: holiday.
But this isn't Glastonbury; it is a European summer stretching well into September. There will be more than one chance to buy tickets and more than one opportunity to enjoy your trip.
Sure, some early birds may be able to fly to Faro for £3.49 and scoop a fine villa for a tenner and a bottle of wine, but prices are not going to rocket across Europe for all travel post-June.
Experts are generally agreed that holiday prices will be subdued this summer to stimulate demand; flights may be slightly higher as airlines can regulate capacity, but hoteliers do not have the same luxury. So accommodation costs will likely remain low.
Portugal prices could also start to creep up now, given that the country is set to reopen from May 17, but that is not the case for the likes of Spain, France, Italy et al, where the return of British travellers is less certain.
But if you book a fortnight in the Canary Islands, no matter the cost, you will spend the next three weeks at least (until the next green list announcement), anxious that you have made a terrible mistake. Where’s the fun in that?
Similarly, if you have been particularly gung-ho and eccentric, and secured your trips to one of the more obscure destinations on the green list, you’ll be peering over the proverbial fence at the options available to those who have decided to wait.
Uncertainty works both ways and given the state of the Government’s handling of overseas travel, it seems Grant Shapps is as likely to ban trips to Majorca for the rest of the summer as he is to open up the entire Mediterranean next week. What good is having your smug feet up on a lounger in St Helena when everyone else just got the surprise go ahead to hit up Mykonos?
I am not taking anything for granted in terms of infection rates and vaccine progress. Yes, the rates all look promising, but we have had our fingers burned before. Remember when Christmas was cancelled?
As I type, the European Union is right now nailing down a date for its own Grand Reopening, based on the rollout of its own holiday vaccine passport. By the time this happens – expected late June – the bloc expects many of its members to have inoculated half of their populations, making international travel safer than it has been for a long time. By then, the UK could be closer to three quarters of all adults.
So it is not like if you don’t book now all is lost. You may have to wait three weeks for the next announcement or calamity, or at most two months until Europe has its house in order.
A final argument in favour of a holiday gamble is the flexibility now offered by most major tour operators and airlines; the former have the added benefit of Atol-bonding, while the latter have introduced their own generous rebooking T&Cs.
But if the last year has taught us anything it is that no matter how easy getting a refund looks on paper, the reality is far more complicated. I have all sympathy for travel companies scraping the barrel to find money they do not have for refunds, but it is not helpful for the financial security of consumers. I would wager it is easier to hold onto your money until there is a greater semblance of certainty.
We’ll get there eventually, so just hold your horses. Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.
'Life is too short to waste at the back of the queue'
Annabel Fenwick-Elliott
What exactly are we still waiting for? I can’t be the only one who has already been muttering this for weeks now. Even Nicola Sturgeon, matron of Scotland, agreed to accelerate her road map out of lockdown, such is the blazing success of our vaccine drive.
It is about time we legalised what much of the nation has been doing already (huddling, hugging, high-fiving), and it’s about time we started plotting for the future. Indeed, it’s about time we booked ourselves a holiday; and the sooner the better, if you want a good deal and a decent spot under the sun.
Following the announcement on Friday that Portugal had made the green list, Thomas Cook said reservations were “through the roof”. There are only so many sun loungers in the Algarve, which, let’s not forget, was teeming with Britons even back when we had the whole Med at our disposal.
Sure, there could be another curveball around the corner. Another variant, perhaps – the only scare tactic our overlords have left, despite the fact that this will, quite literally, always be a threat. But now that even the most cautious leaders across the Western world are conceding the victory these vaccines have won against the virus, I’d say that taking the gamble and securing a decent getaway sharpish, especially given how flexible booking policies are at the moment, is likely to pay off.
“This is the first time I'm able to say I'm not advising against booking foreign holidays,” said Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, exactly 31 days ago. Health Secretary Matt Hancock had already booked his summer holiday, “months ago”, in February.
The green list might be pitiful as it stands, but Shapps was always going to play it safe straight out of the gate. Based on our own data – two deaths yesterday (Sunday 9 May) of people who had tested positive within the last 28 days – it would appear that these jabs are working very well. Looking across the Continent, where mass inoculations are only a few weeks behind us, the graphs are heading the same way.
The EU, which has been largely closed to the rest of the world for more than a year, has seen enough, and has said it will open to all vaccinated foreigners this summer. Ursula von der Leyen, in an unusually bouncy fashion, tweeted last week that it is now “time to revive the EU tourism industry & for cross-border friendships to rekindle”.
If by next month we still aren’t even allowed to visit the tourist-reliant Greek and Spanish islands, where entire populations are being vaccinated as we speak in order to facilitate our return, then really, will we ever be free? I’d rather go all in at this point and face another epic letdown than spend another moment worrying that we might not be.
You might argue, given we’ve been patient for so long already: what’s another few weeks or months? Personally I take the opposite view. I’m so used to plans being cancelled and dreams being dashed by now; what’s another disappointment? They wash off me like a duck’s back. I stopped trying to plot my life around Government predictions about three weeks after our very first ‘three-week’ lockdown in March 2020, and certainly wasn’t surprised when Christmas was cancelled in December.
Life is too short – now more than ever, given we’ve all lost more than a year of it – to waste shuffling around at the back of the queue. Yes, chasing a refund should something go wrong is an annoying prospect, but that was the case when booking a holiday long before the pandemic hit.
Do yourself – and the whole, desperately broken travel industry – a favour, and live your life like it’s going to be OK again. The worst that can happen is that it won’t be. And that’s a risk we take every time we open the front door. This summer, let that be the door of a lovely villa in Tuscany, one you secured nice and early, with a good insurance policy.
