Eighty of biggest names in travel industry urge Priti Patel to ditch 'unworkable, damaging' quarantine

Nearly 80 of the biggest names in the travel and tourist industry have written to Priti Patel urging her to ditch the "unworkable, ill thought out and damaging" 14-day quarantine plans.

The 78 signatories - who include bosses of the top hotels and travel firms in the UK - say quarantine is the “very last thing” the industry needs as the Government seeks to ease Britain out of lockdown and re-start the economy.

They warn the economic outlook is already “grim” and that quarantine will cause serious further damage to a sector that accounts for almost four million jobs - 11 per cent of the country’s entire workforce - and nine per cent of UK GDP.

George Morgan-Grenville, chief executive of tour operator Red Savannah, who led the appeal, said: “The quarantine plans are poorly thought-out, wholly detrimental to industry recovery and are more or less unworkable.   “Signatories to this letter are more used to competing ferociously but, on this issue, we are united.”

The names read like an industry Who’s Who ranging from veteran hotelier Sir Rocco Forte and  bosses of The Savoy, Claridge’s, Cafe Royal, Connaught, Ritz, Goring, Dorchester and Mandarin Oriental to travel firms like Abercrombie and Kent, Scott Dunn, Jules Verne and Der Touristik.

In the letter to the Home Secretary seen by The Telegraph, they urged her to “withdraw immediately” the proposed legislation to impose the mandatory quarantine from June 8 which will require all international arrivals including returning Britons to self-isolate for 14 days.

They criticised the Government for failing to take any action at the start of the outbreak “making it easy for thousands of potentially-affected passengers to spread the virus into the wider UK community.”

Warning of a “high probability” of a “severe recession,” they said the travel and tourist industry had been particularly hard hit in the lockdown because it had had to continue to employ staff to “either cancel, or rearrange existing, often complex, bookings.”

“This means that whilst facing up to a 100 per cent cancellation of forward bookings, cash flows are stretched even further in order to look after and protect existing consumers.”

It said the Government had also been “woefully slow to react and procrastinated to the point of absurdity” over its backing for refund credit notes, that allow people to rebook holidays or receive a cash refunds at a later date.

“The very last thing the travel industry needs is a mandatory quarantine which will deter foreign visitors from coming here, deter UK visitors from travelling abroad, and most likely cause other countries to impose reciprocal quarantine requirements on British visitors,” they said.

France confirmed yesterday it will ask all travellers from the UK to self-quarantine for 14 days from June 8.

The 78 said there was “substantial merit” in Transport Secretary Grant Shapps plan for “air bridges” for travellers from countries with low rates of Covid-19 but said the Government’s apparent dismissal of the plan “without due consultation” was “completely wrong.”

“The people of this country do not wish to be prevented from travelling. The government itself has urged people to use their common sense in terms of their behaviour. Quite simply, it is time to switch the emphasis from protection to economic recovery, before it is too late,” they concluded.

The Home Office, however, said quarantine was an essential part of the strategy to prevent a second wave of the disease and maintain a low coronavirus transmission rate. It was also backed by 80 per cent of the public.

Quarantine will be reviewed every three weeks which could allow a relaxation in the regime on June 29.

Yesterday Boris Johnson told MPs that “air bridges” with countries where the rate of coronavirus infection was"at least as good" as that in the UK could be introduced from the end of June, if agreements could be reached in time.

“We want to drive the R down as fast as we can in this country and to have as sensible a quarantine scheme as possible and to keep flows as generous as we can," he said.

A Home Office spokesman said: “As the world begins to emerge from what we hope is the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, we must look to the future and protect the British public by reducing the risk of cases crossing our border.

“We continue to support businesses in the tourism sector through one of the most generous economic packages provided anywhere in the world. However, it is right that we introduce these new measures now to keep the transmission rate down and prevent a devastating second wave.”