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Heathrow last December.


Abta’s Susan Deer says: ‘The vaccination programme has to make some difference to us being able to travel this year’


Leaders call for ‘stable’ and ‘gradual’ reopening


What is expected in the travel taskforce report on April 12? Ian Taylor reports


Leading industry figures foresee a gradual reopening of travel with tiers of destinations and layers of restrictions depending on UK government risk assessments of countries and destination requirements of UK travellers. Abta director of industry relations


Susan Deer said: “The vaccination programme has to make some difference to us being able to travel this year. [But] realistically, we’re going to see a gradual opening. I don’t think it’s going to be a light-switch moment where travel to all destinations will


48 25 MARCH 2021


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be switched on simultaneously.” She told a Travel Weekly Future


of Travel Forum: “There are two considerations. One is the UK assessment of the destinations and then there is the destinations’ assessments of the UK as a source


market. The destinations we speak to [at Abta] see the UK as an attractive source market. They’re admiring of the vaccination programme and confident we’re going to get people travelling in May or early summer. “We would like to see a system that


uses mitigation measures like testing so you don’t have a situation where a destination is either on or off sale and you don’t go from being on sale to off sale with immediate effect.”


Continued on page 46 travelweekly.co.uk


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