With July at last seeing some flights depart from Belfast for some much needed summer sun – we caught up with Damian Murphy from ANITA to see how travel agents here have been finding things.
“At last we have some flights departing from Belfast to some of our summer destinations and for us it has been a chance to at last to hand out some tickets and help people get away on holiday.
“Having said that the number of flights operating from Belfast is small compared to what it would normally be and the fact that we only have one weekly flight to a greenlist destination has been a setback. People who have been fully vaccinated in the UK no longer have to isolate on return from an amber destination from 19 July – but then out of the blue France was made an amber plus destination at very short notice and this had a big effect on customer confidence.
“The continued insistence on the UK government on testing before leaving your destination and 2 days after your return have proved to be further deterrents to those seeking a break and if we are being honest our industry continues to be the worst affected of any and looks like it will stay that way until 2022.
“We have continued our quest for further financial assistance and had a very constructive meeting with Stewart Dickson and John Blair from the Alliance party who are keen to help us, and just last Friday I met with the new Economy minister Gordon Lyons for what proved to be a frank and very direct discussion.
“I would ask everyone in our industry to have one final push with their own MLAs as we have been told all Covid support will very soon finish. We now now to hope that this current wave of the pandemic will soon pass and we can all start to look forward to a more normal 2022.”
