Travel ban: Epidemiologist says ‘closing borders does not work’

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Going on holidays is something many dream of all year long. Over the last couple of years, however, travel was heavily restricted due to the Covid pandemic and 2022 has already seen its share of travel restriction changes.

France has just lifted its ban on Britons and the UK Government has relaxed testing rules for holidaymakers coming back into the country. 

Cat Jones founded travel company Byway “the week we went into lockdown in 2020”.

She explained: “We’ve only operated in a post-Covid world.”

This gave her some particularly interesting insights into travel in the new normal.

Cat said holidaymakers should “embrace the unexpectedness of ‘where could we end up?’”

She continued: “Why not try something else? Why not step away from getting on a plane and just going to a beach? Try and explore a little bit and stop off and see a couple of places on the way.”

With travel rules still evolving, Cat and her team at Byway help Britons navigate the changing requirements of their holidays.

She said: “We had a couple of people going away in December, to places we weren’t quite sure they were going to make it.

“We have someone in Italy and someone in Germany, and they were meant to travel through France, then the country put a ban on the UK. We had to reroute and ended up going a completely different way and not via France at all.

“You need to have an understanding of the rules right now, and our team is spending a lot of time keeping up with what all the rules are.”

With a focus on slow travel, Cat said Byway’s offering allowed holidaymakers to “travel through multiple countries”.

She said “it was always quite hard to DIY a trip like that”, but with the current situation, however, “it’s also very risky to do it yourself”.

She explained: “We’ve had feedbacks that it’s been a huge weight off everyone’s minds. If we have to cancel it, we will. But we’re going to work as hard as we can to get an alternative.”

Slow travel does not have to be slow or long, it involves enjoying the journey as much as the destination.

Cat said: “You can go on an overnight ferry to Greece, you can go to Corfu on a ferry, and it’s a gorgeous journey.

“In Italy, Verona, on Lake Como, is just absolutely amazing, gorgeous.

“We have a huge amount of interest for Sicily by train.”

Travelling to the EU post-Brexit also added some problems for holidaymakers, but Cat said Britons haven’t had “many Brexit worries”. “The only issue I’ve seen is people travelling with pets.”

She added: “Of course, a lot of people travelling by train or boat suddenly do have an opportunity to take their pets with them. We were surprised by how high the proportion of people taking their dogs on their trips was.”

For pets, Brexit “makes an enormous difference” as owners now need to fill in a lot of paperwork.

Cat said: “The paperwork for the pet and taking the pet to the vet and all of these admin things were never a thing before Brexit. It’s just a lot to get ahead of and make sure you know what to do.”

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