First package holiday in 30 years, Tui exclusive Hotel

melb

Simon Calder was also the person on Good Morning Britain when covid was first found in Italy telling people to book a long weekend in Venice because the price was so cheap!

NoodleDoodleMan

melb said:

Simon Calder was also the person on Good Morning Britain when covid was first found in Italy telling people to book a long weekend in Venice because the price was so cheap!

Presumably the reason why it was such a bargain ?

SC also warned us about the travel implications of Brexit.

He got that right, in spades.

melb

yes I was just meaning it was very irresponsible of him as Italy had already started locking down areas in the north

TELLIT01

I agree that Calder's advice at the beginning of Covid was poor, to say the least.  Basically suggesting that it was an ideal opportunity to travel because prices were low.

NoodleDoodleMan

melb said:

yes I was just meaning it was very irresponsible of him as Italy had already started locking down areas in the north

Yes, Indeed.

CKhalvashi

TELLIT01 said:

I agree that Calder's advice at the beginning of Covid was poor, to say the least.  Basically suggesting that it was an ideal opportunity to travel because prices were low.

It was an ideal opportunity to travel, however that should have come with private testing capabilities before departure and on the return. This, along with advising travel to high risk areas was where he got this wrong.

I personally returned from my home country in March 2022 once many borders had closed and yet didn't legally need to test or isolate on return, so the government was just as bad. I fell ill a few days after return and subsequently isolated for about 3 weeks until feeling a little better. I couldn't have got a test due to availability even if I'd tried and felt it a much better idea to not put additional pressure on the NHS at what was already a difficult time in any event. OH had already been told she'd probably have no more than 2 weeks in the following 8 in work at this point and didn't actually return to work until May, so we were in a position where we could do this.

We did use the opportunity to go to a number of places during Covid, however this was only once adequate testing had become widely available (from July 2020 onwards). At no point would I suggest it's a good idea to advise travel when a virus with an unknown level of risk is present, and what I'd consider to be reasonable knowledge wasn't available until about June 2020 at the earliest.

As a group of companies, we pulled all travel related services we offer off the market on 15 March 2020 and didn't resume selling until the middle of June, at that point with a significantly reduced portfolio to reflect actual virus penetration in destination markets.