Travel with Katie Butler: The US are the last North American country to have a ban in place for unvaccinated travellers

Katie Butler writes: What a difference a year makes and thankfully the industry is finally on the road to recovery.

In addition, it is also a whole year since we welcomed the team members who were on furlough back in the office to work their regular hours, and we really haven’t had chance to look back!

More countries have ended Covid travel restrictions than those that still have them and it appears that Covid-19 vaccines and boosters are losing their importance for overseas travellers.

Aside from mainland China, which remains off limits for tourists, the US, Indonesia and the Philippines are pretty much the world’s only major holiday hotspots remaining closed to those who are not fully-vaccinated who want to travel for leisure purposes.

The USA is of course a very popular destination for our customers and we are asked often when we think they will re-open to the unvaccinated. This is a question we really do not have the answer to.

The US reopened borders to holidaymakers from Europe and the UK in November last year as long as they were fully-vaccinated and also provided a negative pre-departure Covid-19 negative test result.

Not much has changed since then apart from in June of this year it was no longer a requirement to provide a negative pre-departure test.

Now that Canada have dropped all Covid related restrictions the USA are the last North American country to have a ban in place for unvaccinated travellers and there is no sign of a date for a relaxation of the rules. As always – watch this space!

Spain is another of our top selling destinations who still have travel restrictions in place, albeit, you can still travel there if you are un-vaccinated by means of a pre-departure test.

The next review on travel to Spain is expected on November 15, when I know that tourist hotspots have everything crossed (as do we) that they may this time scrap the need to be fully-vaccinated, again – watch this space.

In other news – we were advised last week that Jet2holidays and Jet2.com have made a change to their terminal locations at Manchester Airport which is great news for us and Jet2 customers.

To avoid confusion and make things easier, from November 8, Jet2 will now operate all their services out of Manchester from Terminal 2. This means that if you had a booking from Terminal 1 you will now be flying from the newly refurbished Terminal 2, so double-check your parking and airport lounge bookings if you have already made them.

Late deals remain to be very strong for us with last minute getaways to the Canaries and Benidorm proving popular, in fact holidays departing in November accounted for 12 per cent of our sales last week. Disneyland Paris also was a top destination for us last week, helped by the recent launch of their holidays upto Spring 2024.