With news that almost £300 million in funding that has been set aside to help with COVID is still unspent the Association of Northern Ireland Travel Agents (ANITA) are calling on the Stormont executive to urgently relook at their support package.
Damian Murphy from ANITA said: “Back in November when the executive agreed a support package was needed to help our industry we had thought that things may well start to pick up for us by the end of March.
“It seems now that this will not be the case and that we need support to help get us right through at least until July of this year.
“Our industry has effectively been turned off and left with zero income whilst our staff must continue to work changing holidays and making refunds for those that have been cancelled. Many businesses now find themselves having to start repaying bounce back loans they took out earlier -again with zero revenue to support this.
“Whilst the NI executive have agreed to support us, we are still waiting on details on this and when this money will be available. We are calling on them to relook at the support package urgently with a view to increasing it to help get us to July and to please take into consideration the urgency of our situation and agree to get support to our industry by mid Feb at the latest.”
