ANITA Calls for Roadmap to Travel Recovery

With virtually all non essential travel now halted calls are growing for a roadmap for travel recovery when lockdowns are over

With virtually all non essential travel now halted calls are growing for a roadmap for travel recovery when lockdowns are over.

Chairperson of the Association for Northern Ireland Travel Agents (ANITA), Mr Damian Murphy, expressed concern at the current lack of government leadership on the topic.

He said: “Once again over 95% of normal travel has been halted due to covid restrictions. Whilst at this time we agree totally with the reasons for this and realise that the current number one priority of any government is to defeat this pandemic and save as many lives as they possibly can, we think that now is the time to plan a road map out of this travel lockdown and to start to look at how we can get travel moving again when it is safe to do so.

“We know that testing will form a large part of travel for a while but we also believe that the roll out of the vaccine will help travel to restart and eventually reach a point when we are all free to travel as before.

“It is important that we work together with the Northern Ireland Executive to help formulate a plan that will give people the required level of confidence to start to travel again when it is safe to do so.

“Producing a safe and workable travel map will take time so rather than look at this later. Let’s start now so that we can have this in place and be ready to go when travel is ready to resume.”

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