That was the view of Red Savannah chief executive George Morgan-Grenville, who has over the past week led a sector-wide campaign against the government’s proposed 14-day quarantine on arrival measures.
Morgan-Grenville wrote to home secretary Priti Patel late last week on behalf of what was then 70 fellow travel leaders, calling for the policy to be scrapped – hundreds more from across the travel sector have since thrown their weight behind the campaign.
MPs had been due to debate the issue when they returned to the House of Commons on Tuesday (2 June), but this debate was pushed back to Wednesday (3 June).
Patel and transport secretary Grant Shapps used the delay to set out their defence of the policy in a Daily Telegraph editorial on Wednesday morning, stating that while the government was pursuing an alternative "travel corridor" or air bridge policy, quarantine was vital to guarding against a second wave of coronavirus infection.
Morgan-Grenville confirmed to TTG on Wednesday the home secretary was yet to respond to his letter, despite hers and Shapps’ Telegraph column explicitly referencing the campaign.
Speaking during a Globetrender webinar on Wednesday afternoon (3 June) while Patel defended the quarantine policy in the Commons, Morgan-Grenville said the government was failing to listen to travel’s concerns, and was ignoring the facts before them.
"If they engaged or gave us some visibility about what might be lying round the corner, we could work with them," he said. "Right now, they won’t engage and won’t listen."
Patel confirmed ministers would hold a travel industry roundtable on Thursday (4 June) to discuss the issue. Morgan-Grenville told TTG he had not received an invite.
Asked by host, Globetrender editor and founder Jenny Southan, whether people would return to their pre-coronavirus travel habits, Morgan-Grenville said travellers would fall into two camps; those too cautious to travel, and those who feel with the issue unlikely to go away in the short-term, the risks could be mitigated sufficiently to travel.
"You can only predict the future on what you can see now," he said. "Once people start travelling, it’ll be like taking the cork out of the bottle."
Morgan-Grenville said while 2020 would be a write-off for most travel companies, 2021 could be a strong year for the sector with two years’ pent-up demand ready to be unleashed – even if traffic fails to recover to 2019 levels.
