Leading travel association ABTA has warned of the “immense damage” being done to UK businesses in its latest statement, following the UK Government’s latest advice for all Britons to avoid non-essential travel overseas for an initial period of one month.

This comment is further to ABTA’s statement released yesterday (16 March 2020), which called for urgent support from the Government to help businesses through the short-term.

ABTA’s chief executive, Mark Tanzer, said:

“The UK Government has advised against all but essential travel for 30 days. People’s health must be the number one priority but consideration needs to be had for the immense damage being done to UK travel businesses which are facing a crisis of unprecedented scale.

“Travel businesses are working around the clock to manage arrangements for customers, including repatriation, and have been trying to provide alternative arrangements for those with imminent departures but this has now become impossible as the virus has spread. Travel agents and tour operators are also facing a huge drop in future bookings.

“ABTA is calling for urgent action by the Government to help businesses in the short-term by making funds readily available to travel and tourism companies and to make temporary changes to existing package travel regulation with immediate effect.

“The existing financial protection structures and regulations were not designed to cope with a large-scale collapse of businesses.

“Without these reasonable steps, we risk healthy travel businesses going bankrupt, tens of thousands of job losses across the country and customers losing millions of pounds.”

Visit ABTA’s coronavirus advice page or gov.uk for the latest travel updates.